


where there's a war there'll be ghosts

by linguinibot



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Episode: s10e16 Where There's a Will There's a War, Eventual Happy Ending, M/M, hawkeye dies and comes back as a ghost basically, so if u find those themes hard then be aware that they are very prevalent in this fic!, there are very frank discussions of loss and grief though, um. happy new year?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:42:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28495509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linguinibot/pseuds/linguinibot
Summary: Hawkeye sits up slowly into a world that doesn’t feel real. Or part of him does, at least. Looking down with great effort, like his joints have seized up with disuse, he can see very plainly where his body intersects with his other body. Why is he on the ground? What was it he was just doing? Something that sounds like several claps of thunder sounding all at once explodes somewhere close outside, but Hawkeye doesn’t quite manage to feel surprised. Oh, he remembers, shocked that he was ever able to forget – he’s in the middle of a war.
Relationships: B. J. Hunnicutt/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan/Helen Whitfield, They’re only mentioned though - Relationship
Comments: 27
Kudos: 60





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> the surgeon operating on my brain: it's ghosts in here

Hawkeye sits up slowly into a world that doesn’t feel real. Or part of him does, at least. Looking down with great effort, like his joints have seized up with disuse, he can see very plainly where his body intersects with his other body. The sight of it makes him jolt a little; it doesn’t seem quite right. Come to think of it, he’s _sure_ people don’t have two bodies, one inside the other. He lifts one of his hands out of his other hand, inspecting it. It looks… hand-like. _Ladies and gentlemen, we have a regular Sherlock Holmes in our midst_ , he thinks, in a smug voice that sounds suspiciously like someone he thinks maybe he knows. Who is it that it sounds like? Who does he know? He racks his brain but comes up short. It doesn’t do to dwell on multiple bodies, or people he knows or doesn’t know. Hawkeye is sure that’s a quote from someone. He feels like there should be a punchline.

He looks around, noticing for the first time that everyone around him seems very busy doing other things. He’s been pushed up against the wall of a tent, or maybe a hut of some sort, and lying near him in similar arrangements are people who look slightly too mangled to just be sleeping. Why is he on the ground? What was he just doing? Something that sounds like several claps of thunder happening simultaneously explodes somewhere close outside, but Hawkeye doesn’t quite manage to feel surprised. _Oh,_ he remembers, shocked that he was ever able to forget – _he’s in the middle of a war._

Like an oversized key turning in a comically large lock, everything else falls into place. He’s at battalion aid, helping out with their wounded because their other surgeon died. Was the other surgeon him? No, no, of course it wasn’t. The other surgeon was dead before he even arrived here. 

Hawkeye can feel his brain skirting around something – can literally feel the edge of some huge thought pushing against everything else up there – and yet he instinctively knows that he has to try and keep _not_ thinking about whatever it is. He’s played this particular game before, and his approach is always the same: if he doesn’t _quite_ think it, it doesn’t have to be fully real. Not until there are no other options left _but_ to think it; for the reality of the situation to barge into his life like a battering ram. There’s a dull gnawing in his gut that (not for the first time) makes him question whether that approach has ever worked out well. Or worked at all.

Hawkeye stands shakily, ignoring the way that only one of his two bodies gets up with him. He decides that the best course of action is to start helping out; surgeon is as surgeon does, and hating the war doesn’t mean you abandon the wounded. 

He claps a passing medic on the shoulder to get his attention, but when the guy just keeps on walking as if nothing happened, Hawkeye thinks how strange it is that it felt like his hand hadn’t really made contact at all; like the force of a light breeze against a sturdy brick wall. Easy fix – no more touching anything. 

So Hawkeye talks and talks and talks until he’s blue in the face, but when nobody answers your questions or even acknowledges your existence, lending a helping hand becomes something of an uphill struggle. 

“I know you’re all very busy but I’m trying to help you out here god damn it, can’t anybody see me?!” he shouts finally. “If this is some stupid prank you all decided on while I was out cold, then I'm shocked that I'm the one to have to tell you this, but now is really not the right moment.” 

His voice is loud enough that he can hear it ring out like a bell over the sound of the war being waged on their front porch, but when nobody responds even to that, the sudden thought that maybe they _can’t_ see him, and maybe they _can’t_ hear him, makes him stop trying quite so earnestly. A few words said softly, a wave of a hand here and there, a gentle almost-tap on a shoulder or two. A timid assertion of continued existence is all he feels he has the capacity for after the first few hours. 

Looking into the faces of wounded kids over the shoulders of medics, his hands feel itching and empty without surgical tools to hold. When the one thing you’re really good at – your entire purpose for being in a place like this – doesn’t want you involved, what else is there to do but stand by and watch?

Hawkeye had decided long ago that ignorance wasn’t bliss, but it was as close as he could personally get. Even though doing otherwise made him feel guilty beyond belief, trying to wade through every day with all the sorrows of the world held firmly in the forefront of his mind never ended well, either for him or the people around him. More often than not the effort of trying only led to some neurotic spiral or another. 

Coming from the quiet shores of Maine straight into the throes of war, compartmentalising had become necessary for Hawkeye to be able to function at the level needed to be a good surgeon, and to also keep his sanity as an afterthought. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t that he laughed and drank his way through the days because what was happening didn’t bother him, it was that he laughed and drank his way through the days because everything he saw made his brain scream out in barely concealed rage. Hawkeye didn’t want to be an angry person, but he knew he could be, and he didn’t want to let his anger at the world around him solidify into bitterness, but he knew it had already started to happen. Slowly but surely.

In the here and now of the battlefront, the thought that maybe the medics had just been busy dealing with the unexpected second round of shelling (true to an extent) and that they just didn’t need help from their replacement surgeon (tenuous) and also didn’t want to acknowledge his existence (rude) is preferable in many ways to the more rational reality that he is, in fact, just as dead as the poor bastards lining the edges of the room awaiting transport come morning. It’s a good thing Hawkeye doesn’t believe in an afterlife, or he might actually think that to be true.

Eventually the explosions start to thin out like the back-end of a retreating thunderstorm, and the dead and dying bodies stop coming thick and fast. Feeling that he’s tried everything he can, Hawkeye takes one last look at the dark, dingy medical tent before turning away from the horrors of war and walking out into the night, something hard and cold settling in his stomach as he does so. 

*** 

He and B.J. had talked about ghosts, once upon a time. At the time they’d both said they didn’t believe in them, which had struck Hawkeye as a funny thing; it seemed that every time you spoke to someone about ghosts, there was always one person who believed and another who didn't; but not him and B.J.. He’d tried not to read too much into it. 

B.J.’s reasoning was pretty simple; he’d never seen one, therefore had never had any reason to believe in them. By way of further explanation he quietly confessed that he didn’t even believe in God, ‘never mind floating spirits of the dead.’ 

“What _do_ you believe in then? Anything?” Hawkeye had asked, half serious but with enough of a lilt to his voice that if B.J. so desired he could turn it into a setup for a punchline. Par for the course. 

B.J. thought for a second, and opened and closed his mouth once before speaking, as though his final answer wasn’t his first. “The divine healing powers of a hot shower.” Hawkeye smiled and hummed his agreement, letting the silence sit for a moment as he tried not to think about all the things he almost wished B.J. had said instead. 

“What about you?” Beej asked, sounding genuinely curious. At the time, it was novel enough that Hawkeye was still shocked when B.J. showed honest interest in him and his thoughts about things. Obviously other people did too, but if he was being honest with himself Hawkeye found it startling regardless of who was doing the asking, and rarely did anybody ask with such a lack of ulterior motive as B.J. did. Apart from maybe his Dad. It’s a parent’s job to be interested in their kid, though; B.J. was under no such obligation. Or _maybe,_ Hawkeye had forced himself to think – maybe it was nothing at all. Maybe B.J. was just filling the silence, just like every other person who’d ever had a conversation in the history of the world. 

“I dunno,” Hawkeye eventually said, vowing to give a genuine answer. _Just this once_ , he’d thought; _just ‘cause it’s B.J_ . “I think one life’s more than enough. The idea that I’d have to get through even _more_ of it when I’m dead is terrifying, y’know. I mean, _eternity_ is terrifying.” He gestured widely at that, trying to encompass all eternity in the swoop of an arm, and paused before his next words. “I think–– when I’m gone, I want to be gone for good. There’s really no point in dragging it out.” Hawkeye had never verbalised those thoughts before, but as his mouth moved around his words he knew with increasing certainty that he really meant and felt each one of them. “So, I guess it isn’t really a case of not believing, it's more that I just don’t want it to be true.” 

There was a silence that bordered on slightly uncomfortable. They’d only known each other for a matter of weeks at that point, and even though it had felt like a lifetime there was still the obvious tentativeness of all friendships in their infancy; which, strangely, was comforting for Hawkeye. B.J. presence sometimes felt revolutionary, so it was nice when he was reminded that they were still just two newfound friends fumbling through.

“It’s sort of a shame,” B.J. ventured, breaking the silence with a quiet mirth in his voice like he was sharing an inside joke with himself. “I think you’d be really good at haunting people.”

***

B.J. tries to fall asleep facing away from Hawkeye’s bed, drifting restlessly from one uneasy half-dream to the next.

When he’d found Hawk’s signature repair work on that one guy’s stomach – _vertical mattress stitches with white cotton sutures, thank god!_ – the overwhelming joy at having some scrap of evidence pointing towards Hawkeye still being alive hadn’t left any room for doubt. That had been several hours ago, though, and in the second unexpected load of casualties sent through from battalion aid he hadn’t seen another set of stitches like that first one. The adrenaline and focus had kept him from thinking too hard about it at the time, but now, alone and in darkness at some ungodly hour, B.J. worries. 

Sensing Hawkeye – just being _aware_ of him – has become second nature to B.J. He feels it when Hawkeye walks into a room; when Hawkeye doesn’t like the food he’s eating; when Hawkeye is tired, or angry, or sad, or happy. And when Hawk wakes silently in the night after being pursued by some unknown horror in his dreams, B.J. more often than not finds himself awake too. Not _woken up,_ per se; Hawkeye has long since stopped screaming his way back into consciousness. Just… awake. 

Sometimes he’ll roll over and pretend to have been disturbed by the light switching on, and they’ll slip into their familiar back-and-forth until one or both of them falls asleep again, but in reality B.J. always wakes just before the light turns on. He’s never known how to handle that knowledge and the implications it might have, and so other times he lies very still facing his nightstand, pretending to be asleep, and he stares very hard at Peg and Erin’s black & white faces gazing back at him from the photograph he placed there. He can never really tell if it feels like a reminder or a taunt.

Despite the bone aching exhaustion and the certain promise of more work come morning, B.J. thinks to himself that this is one night where he _would_ roll over. He’d roll out of bed and do sixteen consecutive somersaults with a perfectly stuck landing if it meant having Hawkeye back in one piece; grumpy, bloodied and exhausted down to his bones, but starkly and irreplaceably Hawkeye. 

***

Hawkeye walks. And walks. And walks. His legs don’t get any more tired and the time doesn’t seem to pass in any meaningful way – no sunrise comes suddenly cresting over the dusty valley, no birdsong comes to herald the dawn. He kicks at the dirt on the narrow roads and tries to ignore the fact that it doesn’t quite shift or make a sound under the force of his boots. 

He walks unseeingly through darkness until he somehow finds himself back at the 4077th, as if reeled in by some invisible tether. The thought reminds him of the shimmering green brook trout he used to catch with his dad in the balmy summers of his childhood. Helpless and ensnared; potentially tasty. When did he last call his dad? When did he last eat? Don’t think about Dad. Don’t think about fish. There are certain things that, given more than a seconds thought, could easily bring his current fragile stability crashing down. 

He stands for an indeterminate length of time at the entrance to the camp, trying to remember where to go from here. Where does he _usually_ go? Is there someone he usually goes with? He's lived here for almost a decade, he thinks (can two years be a decade?), he should definitely know these things.

 _Oh,_ thinks Hawkeye without any real surprise, _I should be at the swamp._

In the time it takes to think it, he finds himself there, disoriented and confused at having traveled in the blink of an eye. Or maybe he’s just walked that path so many times that the most recent memory of it fades seamlessly into all the others. He drinks in the sight of his makeshift home and feels forgotten memories flood the gaps in his head like the tide flowing into rocky Maine shorelines. There’s a pang in the chest that doesn’t feel quite like his chest. Don’t think about home. Don’t think about chests, or who they belong to. 

Taking a deep breath that doesn’t feel like it fills him up with any air at all, he crosses the threshold. He does so literally, however, in that he reaches for the handle but passes straight through the wooden door. The truth of his reality suddenly presses in hard and close, rushing in like water in an upturned bottle, and the flimsy bubble of ignorance Hawkeye had constructed for himself pops the second he sees another occupied bed near to his own.

He remembers B.J. the way you suddenly remember the name of someone whose face you recognise, or recall the exact right word to describe something specific; the nagging sensation that you definitely know something and the vindication when it finally comes to you, except if that feeling felt horrendously bad. Hawkeye’s immediate dismay is at ever having tucked away the memory of B.J. in the first place, as though he was something Hawkeye needed to protect himself from thinking about. 

Worse still is that whilst B.J. is alive and well, sleeping ten feet away in a bed Hawkeye realises ruefully that he wishes he was sharing, Hawkeye himself is lying dead on the ground at Battalion aid, his ghost having got up and left to go and stand in the doorway of the swamp. He brings his left hand up to inspect it for the first time since he woke up, and finds with a final sigh of acceptance that he can see straight through to the pile of clothes he forgot to put away that morning, where one of B.J.’s books is poking out from underneath.

***

B.J. finds himself awake in darkness, and he smiles instinctively to himself in relief. He can feel the familiar hum under his skin that he gets whenever Hawk is around, so he isn’t surprised in the least when he opens his eyes to see a bedraggled-looking Hawkeye sat by the side of his bed – the _far_ side too, so he doesn’t even have to roll over to see him. So huge is his relief at having him back that the words B.J. says in his sleep-addled state don’t really process until it’s too late.

“Hey; when I wake up, remind me to give you a kiss.”

His heart stops in his chest when he hears the words come out of his mouth, but he forces himself not to waver; does Hawkeye think he means them? _Does_ he mean them?

“Go back to sleep,” Hawk replies, sounding far away, like an echo. “You’re dreaming.”

B.J. does go back to sleep, thankful for the out. He dreams about radios being held underwater, and San Francisco townhouses without any furniture.

***

There’s a picture beside B.J.’s bed, and Hawkeye looks at it, trying to force himself to think about anything other than kissing B.J.. He’d assumed people would probably be worried about him, especially B.J., but why had he said _that_? The question is so fraught that Hawkeye doesn’t dare let himself attempt to answer. He recognises the photograph as a still from the anniversary film he put together. Or, well – the film he _suggested._ Peg was the one doing the acting. (Is acting the right word? Hawkeye doesn’t want to ask himself that either.) Her and Erin are the reason the film had any emotional impact at all; Hawkeye was merely the conduit for an expression of long-distance marital bliss. Or something.

He looks long and hard at their smiling faces before standing to go to his side of the room. He knows what he would write in place of B.J.’s section of his will, he thinks. If only he could hold a pen. 

***

B.J. wakes the next morning and gets ready for his shift in post-op. He thought he was supposed to be taking this one with Hawk, but the empty bed throws him. He must’ve gone ahead, B.J. reasons, but a small part of him stays snagged on how strange it is for Hawkeye to leave without at least waking him up with a sock to the face or a shake of his shoulder. 

“Charles,” B.J. says loudly, hoping to rouse him from his post-night-shift coma. “Did you see Hawkeye on your way back in?” 

“Ggghrrhgmm…” Charles says. 

“Very dignified, your loftiness,” he mumbles, deciding to ignore the instinct to worry.

The ignoring goes well, until Potter comes in just as he’s lacing up his shoes. The moment B.J. looks him in the eye, he knows something isn’t right. 

“B.J.,” he starts, and B.J. actively starts worrying. Potter never calls him by his first name. “I ah, I need to see you in my office.” He pauses, looking over at Hawk’s side of the room, avoiding eye contact. “I was going to send Klinger for you but ah… I thought I might come get you myself.”

“Everything OK?” B.J. asks, trying to hide the note of panic he knows is in his voice. 

Potter doesn’t answer; he just gestures for B.J. to follow, and then leaves the way he came. B.J. grabs his coat quickly and hurries out after him, weighed down by a leaden feeling settling in his gut. 

Once in Potter’s office, he’s offered a seat but doesn’t take it, preferring to stand for whatever he’s about to be told. Potter doesn’t immediately say anything however, and it’s making B.J. antsy so he breaks the silence himself. 

“Has something happened back home?” The thought hadn’t yet properly occurred to him, but once he says it out loud a sudden fear rips through him like a serrated knife. “Are Peg and Erin okay? Has something happened?” 

“No, no, nothing back home,” Potter says, still looking anywhere but at him. B.J. notices for the first time that there are tears in his eyes, and something about this makes his blood run cold. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Potter cry like that.

“I don’t quite know how to say this, B.J., but… I just received a call from Battalion aid. It– it seems that in that second round of fire… Well, unfortunately, Hawkeye was killed in the early hours of this morning. He was trying to retrieve more wounded from outside the aid tent when they dropped a bomb right close by. A few others were injured but...” He swallows, steadying his voice. “They said they’d bring his body over this morning with a few other stragglers. It's still pretty hairy down there, so the morgue guys want to collect h- them, from us instead.” 

B.J. can’t understand what Potter is saying to him. 

“I– that can’t be true,” he says, the fear actually leaving his body at the words. “I saw Hawkeye just last night in the swamp. I– we _spoke_ to each other.”

The pity that appears in Potter’s eyes as he says this makes B.J. bristle. Potter doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about; B.J. knows what he saw. He knows _who_ he saw. He can’t explain to his _Colonel_ that he knows the other man’s presence as if it's a sixth sense, that he could pick him out from a lineup blindfolded, but _he_ knows. He knows Hawkeye came home last night.

“I called Sidney Freedman ahead of time, and I’m giving you the next few days off, or as long as we can spare you,” Potter says softly, carefully. “If you need someone to talk to… I–” B.J. sees him consider his next words carefully. “I know you boys were close as could be, and losing a good friend like that ain’t easy, I myself know that all too well,” he ventures, voice cracking on the last few words. 

Hearing him and Hawkeye described as ‘close as could be’ sends B.J.'s mood from irritated to incensed even though he can’t pin down exactly why. What the fuck does Potter know about it. 

“Well,” B.J. snaps, tired of the whole thing and sick to his stomach from the look the Colonel is giving him. “I won’t be needing to speak to Sidney, or you, or anyone, about _anything_ , because Hawkeye came _home_ last night, and he isn’t dead. I know he isn’t. They've made a mistake, just like last time.” He moves to the door and pushes it halfway open, speaking before Potter has a chance to. “If you need me, I’ll be in post-op.” 

He brushes past Klinger on his way out of the Clerk’s office, and finds himself face to face with another pair of sad eyes. B.J. doesn’t say anything, and instead storms out of the offices and into the hospital wing. The whole camp has gone crazy – there is no way on earth that Hawkeye is dead.

*** 

Hawkeye watches B.J. storm out of Potters office and feels his heart break all over again. This isn't like last time. There's no dud paperwork, no idiotic misfilings or asinine military bureaucracy. Hawkeye is plain and simple dead as a doornail, and no amount of denial is going to change it. 

He's still staring at the door when he sees movement out of the corner of his eye. Potter is reaching for a bottle from his cabinet, and Hawkeye almost laughs at what he pulls out. It's the same scotch - probably the same bottle, come to think of it - that they'd shared one night in Potter's first week of being at the 4077, when they'd talked about home and everything they'd do when they got back there. A joke about sentimentality in old age dies in his throat when he sees the slight shake of Potter's hands and remembers that nobody would be able to hear it if he said it out loud anyway. 

Potter takes a seat behind his desk and Hawkeye watches him, struck by the voyeuristic novelty of being able to freely observe someone's sacred private spaces. That is, until he notices Potter shed one tear, and then another, and a few more, for good measure. Hawkeye decides he would rather be anywhere than here, watching someone grieve him, and he winks out of existence to try and catch up with B.J.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear to god this will end happy like I have the happy ending planned and half written. They've been put through enough by the actual writers and I wouldn't do that to these fictional characters or myself. This whole thing is just a product of watching too much mash and reading too much about hauntology. Figures!
> 
> I think there will be three or four chapters, have not yet decided based on the random vignettes I've got written to completion. Will update asap but within reason, my brain is semi-functioning at the best of times <3 ALSO this is un-beta'ed and mostly written in bursts in the wee hours of the morning so if you see any glaring mistakes please let me know :)
> 
> If you want to, you can find me @linguinibot on tumblr <3


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> slightly happier, also slightly sadder! wow

It’s Hawkeye’s fault that B.J. is reacting this way. He knows it is.

Somehow B.J. was able to see him last night – perhaps because Hawkeye hadn’t fully faded, or gone over to the other side or whatever the fuck yet, or maybe because B.J. himself was straddling the line between waking and dreaming. _Go back to sleep, you’re dreaming._ Isn’t that what he’d said to him?

Hawkeye mentally kicks himself – mentally beats himself to a bloody pulp – for doing that to him. Hawkeye knows from first-hand experience what it is to question reality, to not be able to fully trust your own memory and perception, and he hates himself for making B.J. feel that way too, even if unthinkingly. No, _especially_ unthinkingly.

Despite his better judgement, however, some selfish part of Hawkeye also hopes that maybe it wasn’t a fluke; maybe B.J. will be able to see Hawkeye again somehow. The only question is would that make things better, or worse?

On the one hand, B.J. could be saved from questioning his sanity, once he finally accepts the reality of Hawkeye’s death and falsely concludes that it couldn’t really have been him in the swamp last night. On the other hand, Hawkeye getting more involved might only prolong the grieving process. Even if he’s technically still here, Hawkeye as B.J. knew him is dead and gone, so shouldn’t he be allowed to mourn properly, without interruption?

He really, really wishes he could talk to Sidney right now. Maybe Margaret knows how to hold a seance and they could all get together for some casual ghostly psychiatry sessions.

Hawkeye follows B.J. out of Potter’s office and into post-op, where he plops himself down on the nearest available bed, immediately thankful that he doesn’t sink through it. One of alive-Hawkeye’s small pleasures was that first time you’d sit down after an exhausting shift in surgery, and even though it’s not like he’ll be doing any of that anymore, he’s still grateful for any small vestige of aliveness.

As B.J. as paces around, Hawkeye keeps a close but cautious eye on him, the way someone might watch a cornered animal on the verge of lashing out. Hawkeye knows B.J. well enough to know that something has to give; he’s practiced at repressing his emotions, but just because someone practices something doesn’t automatically make them good at it. His hidden feelings tend to leak out of him in fits and bursts, often triggered by some seemingly innocuous detail in conversation or a passing comment in a letter from Peg.

Hawkeye has spent so much time just observing B.J., getting to know his mannerisms and quirks and foibles, that he sometimes feels like he knows the other man with the same depth that he knows himself. He just as often feels like he doesn’t quite _understand_ B.J., but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t know him.

B.J. sits down sharply and suddenly in the chair at the far end of the room and leans heavily on the desk. There are patients in most of the beds, fresh in from the night before, and Hawkeye sees the moment that he buries everything as deep down as he can, making the conscious decision to do his job.

_Is there anything I can help with?_

Hawkeye’s traitorous mind supplies him with the second thing B.J. ever said to him, right after the initial pleasantries. The man’s unending desire to help and to put things right is one of the things Hawkeye loves most about him, and has done since that very first day. Where Hawkeye had felt increasingly jaded in the face of unending suffering, but put on a brave face to try and mask it, B.J. was simultaneously calmer and more raw. There was a determination to save people that Hawkeye sometimes forgot in himself but was forcibly reminded of that day, and continued to be whenever B.J. went above and beyond both the call of duty and the bounds of medical practice to try and save just one life. It was like he’d taken Hawkeye that day and instantly breathed new life into him with a joke, a smile and a ‘how can I help’.

 _Shame there's not much life in me now,_ Hawkeye thinks.

B.J. does his rounds, smiling his winning smile at each patient like it's a routine he’s practiced since he was walking and talking. A few nurses come over and speak to him, but he waves them off with a much tighter, less genuine smile than the one he’s giving the patients. His moustache doesn’t even crinkle up at the edges.

Hawkeye is suddenly winded by the desire to go over and sling his arm round B.J.’s shoulders; cracking wise and wordlessly roping Beej into putting on a little show for both the wounded and each other. He almost goes to stand up and walk over there, just to be nearer to him, when he hears the rumbling of a truck making its way into camp and he sees B.J.’s head snap up like a deer at the sound of crunching leaves.

***

In the midst of talking to his fifth patient of the morning, the thought had occurred to B.J. that maybe – maybe – this was some sick, elaborate prank being pulled on him. It was a darn sight more appealing than Hawkeye actually being… not here anymore, but he also thinks that if it were a prank then he’d hate every single one of the people here for the rest of his life, Hawkeye included. Sick fucks.

He excuses himself from post-op when he hears the approaching truck, handing his clipboard over to Kellye and pointedly ignoring the look she gives him. If one more person tries to tell him how sorry they are…

Outside, the early morning sun is just starting to warm up, and he knows that he has to see Hawkeye’s body for himself. There's a slight breeze, and B.J. tries to let his anger blow away with it. He knows it’s a veneer; he knows there’s something more difficult lying underneath the snappy remarks and dark scowl. Anger is easy, but it isn’t what he wants for himself, and it isn’t what he’s really feeling.

Potter comes and meets him just as he reaches the truck, and they exchange a silent look.

 _‘I’m sorry for how I’m acting,’_ B.J.’s says; _‘I just don’t want this to be true.’_

 _‘I’m sorry you have to see this,’_ Potter’s says; _‘but I think maybe you need to.’_

The guy swings open the back doors and B.J. finds that he can’t look away from the bright red cross on his helmet. He remembers the red party he threw for Hawkeye what feels like years and years ago, though it can’t have been more than nine months at most. He’d wanted so badly to give Hawkeye a reason to smile, to be the reason he was smiling. He’d gone out to meet him instead of just waiting for Hawk to come inside because he wanted to be the first one he saw.

“Howdy, stranger,” he’d said, watching a dishevelled looking Hawkeye step out of his jeep. “New in town?”

There was a disbelief in Hawk’s face that B.J. hoped was from the ridiculousness of his appearance, rather than the fact that he’d gone to the effort. He hated when Hawkeye instinctively expected others not to care about him or take an interest in his safety. He threw himself into everything with an impulsive fervour and was shocked when people worried about him, and then he fell into brooding silences and was shocked when people noticed.

That day was one of B.J.’s fondest memories of the war – the laughter, the promise of renewed hope, the pointless joyful stupidity of it all. The way Hawkeye had bounced back instantly, buoyed by the love shown to him by his friends and colleagues, and the knowledge of having done at least _something_ to try and bring the war to an end. His clearest memory of all is the feeling of Hawkeye holding on tight to the front of B.J.’s dyed red sweater, as though it was the one thing keeping him on the ground. As though he wanted to make sure they didn’t get pulled away from each other, even for a second.

B.J. tried to wear red as often as possible after that day, but _that_ red was different to the aid worker’s cross. Their red was a break from the norm; a rosy fuck you to olive drab; a loving gesture. The army’s red was and always will be blood, nothing more.

He forces himself to look down the truck at where Potter is standing already inside, hunched over one of the flimsy canvas shelves. He feels himself climb inside like he’s on autopilot, and before he knows it he’s standing next to the Colonel and both of them are looking down into the face of Hawkeye Pierce. Bloodied, bruised, and torn up a little, but definitely Hawkeye. And definitely dead.

Something irreparable snaps in B.J. and he feels the whole earth tilt underneath him, never to return again to its original state.

***

Hawkeye follows B.J. into the van and stands close by.

Yep, he thinks; that’s me. Dead as anything.

His face escaped mostly unscathed so it's irrefutable that it’s him, but he knows there’s probably a really good reason his lower body is covered over with a dark sheet. He wonders why he didn’t notice how mangled he must've been when he first woke up, though with all the things he’d forgotten about his life in those first few hours he’s not sure he was up to noticing much of anything.

It doesn’t feel as strange as he thought it would, though; seeing his own dead body from the outside. He expected it to be some monumental thing, where he’d feel forever changed and maybe have an epiphany or two. But nothing. No dice. Not even one singular die. Ha, Hawkeye thinks. Ironic. Beej would’ve liked that one.

He looks over at B.J. and sees tears falling slowly down his face and suddenly Hawk is panicking, badly. Seeing his own dead body; fine, whatever. Seeing the man he’s in deep, hopeless love with, crying literally _over_ his dead body; horrendous. Awful. It's possibly the worst Hawkeye has ever felt in his entire life. Or in his entire death, as the case may be.

He needs to get away from here, at least until they’re done doing whatever it is they need to do. Potter reaches out to put a fatherly hand on B.J.’s shoulder and Hawkeye winces, eyes snapping shut.

When he opens them again he’s at the helicopter landing site, just up the hill from the unit. Overwhelmed with conflicting emotions, he looks out across the mountains and breathes in deep, steadying, yet pointless breaths, not feeling any of the daybreak chill that he knows from memory is still lingering in the air. He looks down at his feet, only to find them just as faded as this morning, when he’d finally admitted defeat and gotten up after a night of fruitless attempts at sleep. He’d concluded that maybe sleeping just wasn’t something he could do anymore. 

Maybe, he thinks; maybe his boy will eventually just fade away into nothing, until all that’s left is his consciousness, untethered and totally alone, floating around aimlessly for all eternity. He has no way of interacting, no way of getting the message across that he’s still here, at least in some limited capacity. He passes through everything like water through cloth; or maybe more aptly, like blood through surgical scrubs, though the metaphor feels a little on-the-nose even for his tastes.

He kicks at the dusty ground, unsettling nothing, and idly wonders why he doesn’t just sink straight into it; right through the layers of earth and down to the core. Would he be able to feel it burning if he did?

He feels like he should be able to find the humour in all of this somehow, even just for something to say; something to break this little downward spiral he suddenly finds himself in. But even if it was funny – which it decidedly isn’t – who would he be telling jokes for? Just _himself?_ Now _there’s_ something laughable.

He turns back to face the unit and sees B.J.s stupid red suspenders instantly, like his eyes knew exactly where to find them before he even knew what he was looking for. He’s sitting hunched over on one of the crates just outside post-op, white coat abandoned next to him, and Hawkeye finds himself sat next to him within a split second.

There's a crease between B.J.’s brows that Hawkeye knows he couldn’t smooth out even if he dared. There’s always been a tactile element to their relationship that Hawkeye suddenly misses so badly he wants to cry. Not misses in that it's been so long since (technically, he and B.J. hugged only a matter of days ago), but in that he’s preemptively missing it for every time in the future that he might move to put a hand on B.J.’s waist, or grab his wrist, or slap him lovingly upside the head, only to remember that touching isn’t something he can do anymore; not without phasing through. And definitely not without a relevant conversation to put the touching into an acceptable context, which is, of course, also not possible currently.

A sudden thought strikes him then. Is this what he’s been subconsciously planning on doing? Just sticking around B.J. for the rest of his life, laughing at his stupid jokes even though B.J. can’t hear his reaction? Waiting for B.J. to get over his grief and get on with his life, get back to Peg and Erin? Will Hawkeye just wait here until the end of the war, board whatever plane or ship they send B.J. back on (given that he doesn’t walk straight through it), and follow him to the ends of the earth? Oy _vey_ , thinks Hawkeye, running a hand over his face in a vague gesture of anguish; he really would, wouldn’t he. That’s exactly what he’d do given half the chance and no other options.

 _Oy vey indeed_ , he hears his father’s voice say in his head. Dad always told Hawkeye he’d end up devoting his life to love, or some other such romantic notion. Hawkeye thought he was nuts at the time (he wanted to be a pirate, he didn’t care about love), but it was probably just that – like all parents, as Hawkeye has come to realise – he saw something of himself in his son.

The only reason they lived in Maine at all was because that's where his mother was from - his father was a New Yorker down to his bones. He loved the city endlessly, talked about it endlessly, and they visited most summers and spent a few Hanukkahs there too, along with the rest of his father’s family. When his mother died, Hawkeye had initially suggested moving back there. He’d read somewhere that some people don’t like living where someone they loved died, but his father had just smiled at him, with only a hint of sadness in his eyes.

“This is my home,” he’d said, matter-of-fact. “Crabapple Cove is where your mother is, even now; I couldn't bear to leave her.” Hawkeye thought he’d understood at the time, but he definitely feels like he understands now.

He should go see his dad at some point, he thinks. Visiting your still-living father and lovingly haunting the shit out of him just seems like the thing a ghost should do; maybe he'll just write ‘hi’ in the dust he knows Dad always forgets to clean off the mantelpiece, or turn the pages of his book while he’s not looking. 

Or, maybe, he should do for his dad what he didn’t manage to do for B.J., and just let him grieve in peace. God knows he’s already been through enough.

Oblivious both to Hawkeye's presence and his train of thought, B.J. suddenly stands and starts striding towards the swamp, angrily kicking up dust as he goes. Hawkeye, of course, follows like a lost puppy. Usually he’d feel somewhat self-conscious about the fact that he seems to stick to B.J.’s side like a barnacle, but nobody can see him doing it anymore and so he can’t really bring himself to care. He thinks of a joke about barnacles being the most well endowed creatures on earth in terms of penis-size-to-body ratio, but he keeps it to himself. He’s not quite reached the level of doing comedy out loud for an audience of none, though he is starting to feel the urge really building. It's like that time B.J. made him go a whole day without telling a single joke all over again, but worse in every conceivable way.

Charles is inside when they get there, sitting morosely on his cot, and Hawkeye is surprised to see that his eyes are unmistakably red. Unless he’s been indulging in an ill-gotten reefer, which hardly seems like Charles’ bag, Hawkeye would bet money on him having been crying. Once again he feels the urge to make a joke, like it’s a tick he’s trying to suppress, but then he remembers that he _is_ actually dead, something which tends to be an upsetting event for friends and coworkers alike. In truth, he’s both touched and sad to see it; he just didn’t want to admit that to himself without at least a run-up to it.

Charles offers B.J. a quick pat on the shoulder and opens his mouth once or twice like he wants to say something, before evidently thinking better of it and scurrying off outside. 

Finally alone, B.J. sits down without a seconds pause and starts crying. Big, gulping, heaving sobs that make Hawkeye instantly feel sick. Nothing about _any_ of this is funny, actually. He feels like he did back in the truck, but this time there’s no Potter to comfort B.J. in his grief. There's only Hawkeye, standing as still as humanly (ghostly?) possible, almost as though any movement at all will somehow make the situation worse. Hawkeye doesn’t think it’s possible for this situation to get any worse, but can he make it better in any way?

If it had been him who had lost B.J., Hawkeye knows there would be no consoling him. There would be no posthumous medals of honor, or vigils, or funeral services that could stem the haemophilia of his grief. The simple fact was that there was no future he'd come to imagine for himself that didn't have Beej in it.

But _he_ was the dead guy, not B.J., and he knew that B.J. had come to see him as a source of comfort in a world so frequently bleak; someone he could rely on to make awful situations seem less like the end of all good things. He’d needed it from day one, understandably, and Hawkeye for his part had only been too happy to slot himself into that role and build a canvas-sided home there. Just so long as it meant that B.J. held his hand every so often on instinct, or nuzzled sleepily against his shoulder while Hawkeye pretended to be irritated by the intimate gesture.

But there’s nothing he can do to cheer B.J. up now. There isn’t a joke in the world good enough to stop himself from being dead.

“Hawk,” B.J. whispers between sobs, and Hawkeye jumps out of his skin from the shock of it. His first (stupid) thought is that maybe B.J. can hear his thoughts, but then B.J. continues.

“Please don’t be gone,” he croaks, and Hawkeye’s resolve breaks. He rushes forward to kneel in front of B.J. where he’s sat slumped over on his cot. “Please, please, please,” B.J. is whispering to himself, head in his hands. Hawkeye feels himself start to cry, too.

“I’m– I’m not gone, Beej,” he implores, hands held out just inches away from B.J. “I’m dead but I’m not gone.” He can’t help it; he gives in. He knows it won’t work, knows he can’t actually make contact, but he closes the distance anyway and reaches out to touch B.J.’s knee. It feels like dipping the tips of his fingers into a warm bath, where the edge of the water can be clearly felt.

“ _Hawk?”_ comes B.J.’s voice, this time as a question. Hawkeye looks up, confused, and then snaps his hand away and falls back onto the floor in shock. B.J. is looking right at him, directly in the eye.

“Hi,” he says, and then immediately kicks himself. _Hi?_

B.J. jumps up from the bed and stands there, not saying anything.

***

He stares and stares and stares until his eyes start to water, both from having them open too long and from the threat of tears. He doesn’t want to blink, just in case Hawkeye disappears. So when he does and he doesn’t, he risks breaking the silence.

“Am I crazy?” he asks, not sure if he’s asking Hawkeye or himself.

Hawk smiles, teary eyed. “Yes, but that’s an entirely separate issue, quite frankly.”

B.J. feels fresh tears of his own falling, he can’t stop them, and they only fall harder at how Hawk’s face crumples at the sight. Hawkeye stands and moves towards him again, his gentle outline glimmering slightly in the diffused morning light coming through the exposed side of the tent. Hawkeye stops himself from reaching out all the way, but B.J. closes the distance and stretches his hand out to place it on Hawk’s chest; or, well, in, as the case may be. He snaps back, shocked at the feeling of it – cold, but not biting like ice or a bitter winter wind. Cold in the exact opposite way that a body is warm; cold like a corpse.

“Are you okay?” Hawk whispers after a few seconds of B.J. staring slaw jawed at his own hand.

“No I– _Jesus,_ Hawk! Of course not! I– you’re dead,” he whisper-shouts. “You’re dead and its all my fault because I went to get a haircut and a fucking _manicure_ , a-and now I’m here talking to a _hallucination_ like as if it’s actually you because I feel so bad and I want you to be alive _so_ badly, and I–”

“Hey, _hey_ , now hold on for just a second,” Hawkeye rushes, angling his neck to try and catch B.J.’s eye, “in what world is any of this your fault, Beej?”

“Because I, if I hadn’t gone on–” he has to take a breath as a heavy sob racks his body, and he slumps down to sit back down on the nearest bed. It’s his own, but Hawks stupid red robe is crumpled on top of it, trapped underneath his legs. “It was my turn to go. It should’ve been me.”

Hawk moves to kneel in front of him and he holds a cold hand over B.J.’s leg, obviously trying to imitate the real gesture without just sinking into him. It's still cold, but if he doesn’t think too hard about it B.J. can almost imagine that it’s the kind of cold you feel for a split second when something is actually red hot and starting to burn you.

“B.J., me dying accidentally is _not_ your fault. If anyone’s to blame it's the schmucks who started this goddamn war in the first place, and even _more_ -so the American schmucks who decided to stick their warmongering noses into it all and force us lowly surgeons out of the hospitals and into the line of fire!”

B.J. tries to absorb what Hawkeye is saying, but he can’t do it. He knows it isn’t real. He knows this is just grief, he knows it’s wishful thinking. A hallucination, a trick. Sometimes if you want something enough, you can imagine it to be true. Maybe Potter was right; maybe he _should_ talk to Sidney.

“You’re… you’re not really here,” he says finally, ignoring how Hawkeye's face goes hard.

“Am _too,_ ” Hawk replies petulantly. “Right here in the not-flesh.”

“Don’t joke,” B.J. warns, “not about this.”

“Yeah, okay,” mumbles Hawkeye, and B.J. almost laughs at that in spite of himself. He always has to have the last word, even in B.J.’s imagination.

They sit motionless, staring like they’re each waiting for the other to draw first.

“Tell me something you’ve never told me before,” B.J. says quietly, after what feels like an age.

“What?”

“A story, a fact, whatever. Just tell me something about you that I don’t already know.” It’s the only plan he can think of. He needs something concrete. “I… I was gonna call your Dad, maybe later, just to…” Hawk’s dad will have been informed by now; Potter said he was going to do it over the phone. A telegram seemed barely enough to do it right. “I can ask him about it. If he says it’s true, then you’re real, and not just in my head.”

Hawkeye (or his ghost? B.J.’s grief-stricken reconstruction of him?) looks panicked for a second. “You can’t tell him that I’m—”

“What, a ghost? I’d sooner tell him that I’m being carted off to the nuthouse, which, if someone catches me talking to myself like this, might actually be the case.” It sounds like it should be a joke, but neither of them laugh. ”C’mon,” B.J. says, quieter, kinder. “Just one story.”

Hawkeye's ghost eyes him for a minute before he rises from the floor and moves to the other side of the swamp. He does so like his body has an actual weight to it, but when he sits down on his cot, the bedsheets don’t move an inch underneath him. B.J. goes over and sits next to him, careful not to let their bodies touch. He doesn’t like the cold.

“Have I ever told you that I probably know more about sea urchins than any other person you’ve ever met?”

Despite himself and still with tears in his eyes, B.J. laughs a little. Even if this isn’t real, at least it’s making him feel less like the world is ending. “I don’t remember it coming up, no.”

“Well, when I was about eight,” Hawk starts, his voice slightly shaky, “me and dad went out to one of the beaches in Crabapple Cove; one of the smaller ones, so we’d have it all to ourselves. It was a beautiful New England autumn, and all the trees on the walk down there were the most beautiful shades of orange and yellow, the kind of thing you’d see on a postcard. That was always what I loved most about home, the autumns there. You felt like everything was ending, but ending in a beautiful way, like the world was promising you something beyond the end.”

Hawk looks over at him, and B.J. marvels at the sheen of tears in his eyes. There’s no way this could be all his own construction — even in death Hawkeye is the most vital person he’s ever met.

“ _Anyway_ ,” he continues after a few too many seconds of holding B.J.’s gaze, “we walked down one day. I think we were gonna go look at rock pools or something, we used to do that a lot on weekends. Stupid competitions like who could find the smallest crab, or who could collect the most of a specific type of shell, stuff like that. But yeah, this one day my dad’s busy looking at something on his own somewhere up the beach, so I go out to the water to see if I can see any trapped jellyfish. The shores out in Crabapple Cove are really rocky, so any jellyfish that get washed up get sort of trapped in all the gaps. Means you can prod and poke at them, and if you’re careful then they can’t sting you. Well, I didn’t see any jellyfish that day, but… I _did_ find a sea urchin.”

He smiles a little as he says it, and B.J. thinks that maybe he knows where this story is going.

“My dad had told me about sea urchins, y’know, cautionary tales, the likes. ‘Whatever you do, don’t touch the spines, they hurt like all hell,’ that sorta stuff. Well, one thing you should know about eight year old Hawkeye was he was _exceedingly_ curious, about pretty much everything. _‘Why’_ was probably my most used word at that age, to the absolute delight of my parents, and my impulse control has always left much to be desired; that's not just something I picked up in recent years.” There’s a wry smile on his face, and he stares off into the middle distance, lost inside the memory.

“So yeah, I find this sea urchin. This big Atlantic Green that just looks sorta like a moss ball, but if a moss ball and a porcupine had a baby. And I know I’m not supposed to touch it, because apparently it’ll hurt, but the thing is: I want to know how _much_ it’ll hurt. Dad had told me they couldn’t _really_ kill you, so I wasn’t too worried about that. I just wanted to know for _sure_ , because that’s the kind of obnoxious kid I was, I guess. So I touch it, and surprise surprise, it hurts like fucking hell. I scream out, in surprise at first, and my dad comes running down the beach, hopping over rocks and stuff like a gazelle, and he sees what I’ve done and he scoops me up, cursing all sorts at me under his breath. I must’ve heard meshuggeneh in there eight or nine times at least.” Hawk laughs loudly as he says this, and B.J. is nearly bowled over by how much he’d missed the sound of it, even in just the last day and a half. The threat of it being gone forever had made the loss more palpable.

“Not the best bedside manner, I don’t think, but I _had_ scared the living daylights out of him, so I let him off the hook. He carried me all the way back home and plopped me down on the sofa, and Mom ended up coddling both of us ‘causeDad was still shaken up from hearing me screaming bloody murder. Anyway, it was all fine, Dad being a doctor and all. He got the sting out, soaked my hand in hot water, the whole shebang. Plus, we had crab cakes that night as a treat, my favourite. Mom always made the most _incredible_ crab cakes.”

B.J. imagines family meals in the Pierce household were somewhat more inviting than in his own childhood home. He pictures young Hawkeye sitting at the table, hand bandaged up and eagerly awaiting the plate of food put down in front of him. He imagines Hawkeye's father attempting to give him a stern lecture about not being so careless with his health, but dissolving into laughing along with Hawkeye as he tells the story over again. His mother would be looking at them both lovingly, joining in with laughter like tinkling bells. Or maybe she had a barking laugh – maybe that's where Hawk gets it from.

“So yeah,” Hawkeye continues. “After that little incident I decided I wanted to know everything I could about sea urchins; made Dad get me all sorts of books from the library. I’m still not sure _why_ I cared so much, but I guess morbid curiosity has always been sort of a theme for me.” B.J. snorts at this and wipes away a few more tears, not sure if he really has the right to say that he agrees. Hawkeye, though, looks like he's weighing something up – he's chewing a little on the inside of his lip, a trait B.J. has come to associate with indecisiveness. Obviously there’s something more to this story, B.J. thinks to himself, and so he waits patiently for Hawkeye to continue.

“And then… after dinner was finished, Dad showed me what he’d been looking at while I was running off doing my little pain experiment. It was this rock, except it– it was two rocks, and they were sort of… stuck together, probably just with sediment and stuff, but I’m no geologist. They were two very different kinds though, it was like they’d been right on top of each other for so long that they’d fused. When I was a kid I always liked thinking that they chose to stick to each other like that, but then maybe that’s just because I got into reading poetry a little too early.”

B.J. thinks out of nowhere that his younger self would have liked little Hawkeye.

“And then right in the middle was a hole going through both of them. The whole thing was… I mean it really was beautiful, and I asked my Dad if I could have it, and he said I could as long as I promised not to touch any more sea urchins.” Hawkeye is smiling still, and then he gestures over to his trunk. “It’s in there, actually, in the bottom left corner I’m pretty sure. I’d go and grab it myself if I could, but uh…” he lifts his hand in front of his face, and B.J.’s stomach lurches when he realises (remembers?) that he can see straight through Hawkeye. Now in both the metaphorical _and_ the literal sense, he thinks dryly.

“You want me to…?”

“Yeah, please, I— well, I’d like it if you kept it, to be honest, it's not like I'll be getting much use out of it now.” His smile turns sad, and B.J. stands and walks over to his trunk so that he doesn’t have to see it. He feels close to a second breakdown; he doesn’t want to push his luck.

It’s right where Hawkeye said it would be, though, and is just as he described. Two very different rock types, about the size of a fist and fused along a seam, each with a little asymmetric overhang where they mustn’t have been quite the same size. And right in the middle, smoothed away at both entrances, is a perfectly round tunnel going straight through both rocks. B.J. holds it up to his eye, squinting to look through the hole at Hawkeye.

“Ahoy captain,” he says, wanting to say anything to try and clear the lump that’s settled in his throat again at the unexpected gift.

Hawk chuckles and gestures for B.J. to bring it over to him, so he does. B.J. holds the rock out between them, and they both quietly inspect it for a minute or so as he turns it over in his hands.

“I used to think of it as being like me and Dad, made of different stuff but cut through with something shared, like… like being doctors, or both liking piano jazz, or something.” B.J. looks up at him, and Hawkeye’s lost in thought, the telltale crease between his brows. “But now, I guess…” His eyes flick up, meeting B.J.’s where he’s already staring. B.J. knows this particular dance; they’ve done it hundreds of times before, and the jolt of electricity he feels is no less exciting or terrifying than the first time it happened whilst waiting outside that airbase in Kimpo, his stupid joke still lingering in the air like a speech bubble in a comic.

He was enchanted from the off. In a sea of olive drab, the lanky, hunched-up looking guy in front of him seemed to stick out like a sore thumb, despite the same basic get-up. There was something in his movements, in his casual cynicism and easy banter that lit B.J. up from the inside out, and he found himself rising to every scrap of small-talk that Pierce – or Hawkeye, as he came to prefer – threw his way. B.J. knew he should be careful. He knew he shouldn’t latch onto people like this, especially in a place like this. But when your life is literally on the line day after day, who could ever begrudge you anything that takes the edge off, be it booze, women, or in B.J.’s case, Hawkeye.

B.J. remembers trying to ignore the way his stomach swooped a little when Hawkeye told him he wasn’t married. It’ll be easier that way, some unfamiliar part of him reasoned. Easier how? Moreover, easier to do _what_? B.J. wasn’t – and still isn’t – sure. He tends to have a much more detached relationship with his gut feelings compared to the majority of people.

His guts, however, had made their sentiments forcibly known when he rolled that kid over in dirt to find half his face and chest obliterated. B.J. had always liked to think he had a strong stomach, but in that moment – under fire, under pressure, under-prepared – the dramatic onslaught of the horrors of war proved to be too much. He’d wanted so badly to at least try and help, and had been instantly shot down by the cold, unfeeling harshness of reality. How did Hawkeye do this every day? How could _anyone_ do this every day?

 _Saving someone becomes difficult if there isn’t much left of them to try and save,_ Hawkeye had said to him much later that night, but that didn’t mean that B.J. hadn’t wished to be anywhere else as he keeled over in the dust, fingers clawing at rogue blades of dried up grass, just to try and hold onto something. A hand had broken through B.J.’s little bubble of anguish, settling warm and solid on his back, only to be followed by a second on his forehead, soothing his racing thoughts.

Amidst heaving up his meagre breakfast and singular bourbon, B.J. remembers feeling like a kid again; sick, scared, and bordering on hysterics, but safe in the knowledge that there was someone wiser and more experienced there who cared about you, who would look after you.

Hawkeye was both a more experienced doctor and a more experienced soldier, if that term even applied at all; B.J. had doubted even then that Hawkeye would take too kindly to the label.

Though they’d only met hours before, B.J. also knew somewhere deep down, in a place where all your sacred and innate thoughts are stored, that Hawkeye cared more about everything and everyone than perhaps anyone else he’d ever met in his life.

He sees that care now in Hawk’s eyes as he looks at B.J. holding this beautiful gift he’s just given him. He wants to reach out and brush his hand against Hawkeye’s face, even if he knows he can’t, and he almost decides to just do it anyway as he's swept up in the lightness of having him around again, when Hawkeye suddenly fades back out of existence.

***

“Hawk?!” B.J. shouts, sounding panicked.

“Beej, what the hell, you’ll make me pop an eardrum,” Hawkeye gripes, rubbing at his ear mostly in jest.

He starts to match B.J.’s panic though when he realises that B.J. is no longer looking at him; his eyes are looking through him, round him, beyond him. Shit.

“Beej, _Beej,_ ” Hawkeye says with increasing volume. “Can you see me? Hear me?” He waves a hand in front of B.J.’s face. Nothing. B.J. starts to visibly crumble again, and Hawkeye searches frantically in his head for something to reassure him – how can he comfort someone without words, without touch?

He knows it’s not the same – and he feels simultaneously like he’s both over- and under-estimating his own importance in B.J.’s life with the comparison – but when he’d lost his mother all those years ago, music had been a comfort to him and his father. Hawk remembers his dad playing the piano to him, aged twelve and bundled up on the sofa. Just simple melodies, sometimes made up, sometimes old jazz standards they both loved, but it worked every single time.

Though he’s generally not one to agree with Charles if he can absolutely help it, the other man is right in that there’s something inherent about music that just lifts the soul, even from the deepest, darkest pits.

He looks across at Charles’ record player, and before the thought is even fully formed in his mind, a ghostly, see-through record appears in his hands. Not just any record, either; one of his, from back home. The one with the bent corner and tattered edges, scruffy with overuse. It’s one of Hawkeye’s favourite songs, and more than anything he wants to play it for B.J. right now.

Having desires as a ghost is a strange phenomenon; things just seem to happen, without any input. He can turn up in places in the blink of an eye and disappear just as easily, and while he can’t touch anything, he’s hoping that he can manipulate his environment in other ways. He doesn’t know how any of it works, but he’s not going to think about it too hard just in case it stops working.

He goes over to Charles’ side of the room and takes the record out of the sleeve, hoping that it will actually sit _on_ the turntable and not just fall through. When he places it down gingerly and it stays there, he barks out an excited laugh and rubs his hands together in anticipation.

He’s just debating how he’s going to get the damn thing to turn on, given that he can’t actually touch it, when the opening piano stirrings ring out through the tent. Hawkeye see’s B.J.s head snap up and look towards the source of the music, fear and hope evident on his face when he cranes his neck and sees no record spinning there.

_I’ll be seeing you, in all the old familiar places,_   
_that this heart of mine embraces, all day through._

“Hawk?” B.J. whispers, voice hoarse. “Are you still there?”

Hawkeye goes over to where he’s still sat and kneels down in front of him. He’s suddenly aware of how much this seems like a confession of love. He doesn’t know if he cares anymore whether B.J. works it out or not. He'll think about that later.

“I’m here Beej,” he says with as much feeling as he can muster. “I don’t know what happened, and I have no clue if you’ll be able to see me again, but I’ll keep trying. I’ll be here.” Even though B.J. can’t hear him right now and makes no reaction to his words, Hawkeye still doesn’t quite have the guts to finish the sentence _. I’ll always be here, if you’ll have me._

But then, Hawkeye thinks, what's being dead good for, if not living without regard for consequences? He gathers up his courage, and though he knows he most likely can’t, there's a small part of Hawkeye that hopes B.J. hears him when he next speaks, quiet as can be.

“I love you, B.J.” His voice catches; he swallows. “Always have, always will.”

_I'll find you, in the morning sun, and when the night is new,_   
_I'll be looking at the moon, but I'll be seeing you._

As the song comes slowly to an end, B.J. lifts his hand from next to where Hawkeye placed his own on the bed and wipes away a few errant tears. He breathes deeply, stands to place the rock underneath his pillow, and leaves, passing through where Hawk is crouched on his way out.

Hawkeye feels his heart ache along a well worn fault line, cracked and patched up so many times that it just doesn’t quite break anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the whole urchin thing was kind of inspired by my younger sister putting her hand on an iron when she was little because our mum told her it was hot, but she wanted to know exactly How hot. classic. and the song Hawk plays is obviously billie holiday's version of i'll be seeing you, one of my most favourite songs ever.
> 
> a lot of this i already had written, so the next update may be slightly slower as there's quite a bit i still need to work out. thank you all so much for the kind words so far both here and on tumblr; it's very very much appreciated!
> 
> again, if u want, i'm @linguinibot on tumblr :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> once again any errors are mine etc etc this caused me great pain to write etc etc it will have a happy ending etc etc <3

He didn’t end up calling Hawk’s dad that same evening (seeing a ghost does tend to throw your schedule off), but the next afternoon, after throwing himself blindly into his work in an attempt to forget everything except his medical knowledge, he decides he will.

So much of the events of the last two days have been reminding him of when Hawkeye had been accidentally marked deceased, and the Army had turned up looking for the corpse; he's technically dead, but he's also... not dead. 

B.J. hadn’t known Hawkeye long at all at that point – weeks at most – and he’d quietly been scared half to death by Hawkeye’s talk of giving up, lying down amongst all those cold, still bodies; the thought of it now makes him feel sick to his stomach. Is it possible for real life to have foreshadowing?

It was also definitely odd, he’d thought at the time, that Hawk’s dad had picked _him_ of all people to call; although he’d be lying if he said the presumed intimacy hadn't made his stomach do a strange sort of acrobatic manoeuvre that he couldn’t work out if he liked or not. Now, of course, B.J. knows he's the closest person to Hawkeye here; Hawkeye himself had said so, and it feels only right for B.J. to reach out to Hawk's dad first this time, even if there’s still a pang of apprehension as he waits for the operator to connect him to a line somewhere in Crabapple Cove. He has to go through with it; both for Dr. Pierce's sake, and for his own. He needs some external confirmation that Hawkeye’s story was real; he can't just trust himself blindly on this one.

There’s a crackling on the other end of the line and B.J.’s heart rate spikes as he realises all at once that he's going to have to be comforting in the midst of his own loss. He’s dealt with grief before, of course; it comes with the territory. But how the hell is he meant to do _this_? 

“Dr. Pierce? A-are you there?”

“B.J.?” comes a kind but raspy New York accent. “That you?”

“I– yeah, hi,” B.J. stumbles. “Yeah it’s–it’s me.”

“How are you?”

B.J. is caught off guard. “I– well, I feel like I should be asking you that, Dr. Pierce.” 

“Oh, call me Dan, B.J., please.” 

“OK; Dan.” There’s a silence for a moment, and B.J.’s instinct is that he’s already messed this up somehow. 

“If you’d called yesterday it might’ve been a different story but, unfortunately, I’m… something of an old hand at this,” Daniel says eventually, and B.J.’s heart breaks for the tired sounding man on the other end of the phone. “I’ve been trying to make peace with this being a possibility since the day he went over there. Every phone call I ever got from Korea, I expected it to be bad news; yesterday just... happened to be the day.” B.J. hears a sniffle and some shuffling, like he's rearranging himself in his chair. B.J. pictures Hawkeye doing the same. “Anyway," he continues, schooling his voice into something approaching conversational. "I asked you first. I find it's always easier to help others with _their_ problems than to try and express your own, don’t you think?” Daniel asks, making B.J.'s brain fizzle out for a second; it’s like the man read his mind.

“I’d definitely have to agree with you there, Dan.” He pauses, debating his next words with a bittersweet smile. “D’you think... maybe there’s a reason we all became Doctors?” 

Dan laughs, sounding tearful, and B.J. breathes a small sigh. Death is hard, it’s messy, and it’s endlessly painful, but it’s something that everyone shares and eventually knows as intimately as they know themselves; he only hopes Hawk's dad will continue to cope with all the loss in his life as well as he seems to be coping now. 

He doesn’t dare wish anything of the sort for himself, though. He’d probably just jinx it.

***

Hawkeye is there, sitting unseen on Klinger’s cot, when Beej finally decides to ask about what he’d told him the day before. 

“Do you remember… well, Hawkeye told me a story, once, about a sea urchin, am I remembering it right? Did he really touch one on purpose, just to see?”

He tries to listen for his dad’s response but has to get closer; it's hard to hear anything from halfway across a room, never mind halfway across a room and an ocean to boot. He stands next to B.J. where he’s sat stiffly at Klinger’s desk, and leans down to get his ear as close as possible to the receiver. He hopes that maybe B.J. can feel him there, just a few excruciating inches away.

 _I’m sorry, Hawk; I threw your golf clubs away,_ his dad had said to him all that time ago, when he’d finally gotten through the layers of faulty telephones and army bureaucracy to inform him that he wasn’t actually dead. Hawkeye had laughed at the time and said something about needing new ones anyway, but right now the thought of his dad – alone and grieving in a house three times too big and full of things that don’t belong to anyone – makes Hawkeye want to cry so badly that, if he started, he doesn’t think he’d ever stop. 

The only thing keeping him together is knowing that his dad hates to wallow (a fact that the golf clubs are testament to), and he knows in turn that his dad knows Hawkeye well enough to know that he wouldn’t ever _want_ him to wallow – life goes on, his dad had said many times in Hawkeye’s adolescence. It will hurt, and hurt some more, and probably even hurt a little bit more after that, but he knows that eventually the bearable moments will start to outnumber the godawful ones. One day his dad will be able to walk down to the beach down the road from their house, stand on the rocky shore looking out across the bay, and think about Hawkeye and his mom and smile at the memory of them rather than cry at the loss. 

_Life goes on_ , Hawkeye thinks as he looks sideways, studying B.J.’s profile. Just not for him.

***

He doesn’t want to think about it. About any of it. His head feels like it's been put in a centrifuge. 

“Yeah, I remember,” Hawk’s dad had said, with a small chuckle. “I almost had a damn heart attack, him screaming up the beach like a banshee. We both egged each other on, too; him screaming made me shout which made _him_ scream even more,” he laughed properly then, swept up in the memory. “We must’ve been quite a spectacle, going on like that all the way home. I remember being shocked it didn’t end up in the local news – small towns, y’know? Can't even sneeze without the neighbours knowing.”

In all honesty, B.J. had been holding out a little bit of hope that maybe it _wasn’t_ really Hawkeye; not that he wants to be seeing things, of course. It’s just that he can’t decide if it would be better to be seeing things than to think of Hawkeye the way he must be right now, stuck somewhere between living and dying. Partly because he doesn’t want that for Hawkeye, and also (selfishly) because now that he knows Hawk really is around here somewhere, all B.J. wants to do is see him again. He has no idea how they’d first managed to break through whatever barrier has sprung up between them, and where initially he’d been grateful for the smallest scrap of anything in the face of an eternity of nothing, now he’s just terrified that they won’t be able to do it again. 

Some small part of his brain is screaming that having these thoughts at all is terrifying in itself; Hawkeye was his best friend, sure, but does that account for B.J. feeling like he’s lost some essential part of himself too? 

He floats through the rest of the day on autopilot; going through Hawkeye’s will with Potter and the others, crying with them, following them all into the O. club, drinking until he feels like he might throw up. He just goes through the motions; Hawkeye might be a ghost, but B.J. himself feels like a dead man walking.

 _What kind of a friend would I be to let you pass away without a party?_ , his brain dredges up his own words, unbidden. He’d said that when the Army just _thought_ Hawk was dead, though, that’s the difference. Now he’s dead for real, and B.J. _still_ feels like it’s his fault, no matter what ghost-Hawkeye says. One trip to Tokyo and Hawk ends up dead. Now the unit’s lost a surgeon, a father’s lost his son, and B.J.’s lost his… well, his—

“Hawkeye wouldn’t want us to be sitting here all depressed,” he hears some far away voice say from where he’s slumped at the bar, staring into his drink and willing himself not to think the end of that sentence. 

“I remember one time, Hawkeye was—” 

B.J. interrupts whoever else just started speaking by loudly pushing his stool out from under him and stumbling out of the O. club. 

The swamp waits for him like a tomb; full of evidence of Hawkeye having been there once, but devoid of his actual person. B.J. clumsily grabs at a balled up pair of socks that have been put on the end of his bed. They’re clean, he’s positive; but he can’t tell if they’re his or they’re Hawkeyes. He decides he doesn’t care. 

B.J. falls gracelessly into bed, gripping the socks tight to his chest just for the feeling of holding onto something, and sleeps in fitful bursts facing Hawkeye’s side of the room. He thinks that maybe if he wants it hard enough he might just open his eyes and find Hawkeye himself lying there, alive and opaque as he was two days before.

***

Hawkeye follows B.J. into the clerk's office, again. He’s been doing a lot of following B.J. around this past day or so, he thinks to himself, and he rolls his eyes at his own predictability. Give him the total freedom to go anywhere, watch anyone, or listen to anything without detection, and all he wants to do is walk around after Beej. Figures. 

He’d tried all morning to get through to him again — prodding, poking, waving, shouting, laughing, poking, crying a little bit — but to no avail. Might as well just follow him round and see what happens, he reasons.

Yesterday evening, after the phone call to Hawk’s dad, B.J. had helped Potter go through the will that he’d helpfully written just hours before he croaked. They’d brought everyone into the office, gotten the details straight about what had actually happened, and then Potter had read out Hawkeye’s words as the man himself stood unseen at the back of the room, listening in. 

It was as painful as he could’ve imagined, seeing his friends cry over him, all of them touched that he’d thought to leave them anything at all. Charles had been particularly difficult for Hawkeye to watch, simply because of the cognitive dissonance of seeing the man cry over him. People weren't meant to see other people react to them dying, Hawkeye decided, because what had hurt most of all –– hurt like an ice-pick to the gut –– was hearing B.J. accidentally talk about him in the present tense; he’d caught himself and corrected immediately. 

Hawkeye had left after that, winking out of existence and choosing once again to sit out on the hill until sunrise — like he had the night before, too — listening to the gentle hum of the outdoors and trying to ignore the sounds of life coming from the O. club; drinks in his memory, but organised by Potter this time instead of B.J.. A wake's not quite as fun when the dead guy's actually dead, though.

That said, Hawkeye still doesn’t really _feel_ dead. He’s there, in the world with everyone, but at the same time he isn’t. Spending time alone seems to help him both forget _and_ remember that fact, though he’s not sure which he wants more. His whole life he’s been convinced he would accept death graciously; if it happened, it happened. But now? All he really wants is to be alive again; to be with B.J. again.

“Thanks, Klinger. Peg? Are you there?”

Hawkeye feels his stomach drop. Oh right, he remembers; B.J. has a life beyond the war. 

As much as it sometimes felt like it, the little bubble they crafted for themselves out of surplus and home-brew is not where the world itself ends. There are oceans between them, sure, but B.J.’s family are waiting anxiously for his return, and for all his camaraderie and willingness to go along with Hawkeye’s hijinks to pass the time, B.J. is just as anxious to get back to them. This whole experience has just been a stumbling block for B.J. on his way to having the perfect life. Hawkeye knows this. He’s always known this and he tells it to himself whenever he feels like he’s getting in too deep. He just wishes it hurt less every time he remembered. 

“Yeah, Peg, I can hear you.” 

Hawkeye follows Klinger out of the clerk’s office, deciding once more to go elsewhere — if there's anything he learnt yesterday, it's that some things aren’t for his ears, even if nobody knows he’s there listening. 

***

“Peggy, I–” and he doesn’t even get to the next word before he feels his throat close up at the threat of tears. “It’s Hawkeye. He’s… he’s dead.” There's a shocked silence following his words, and B.J. hates the way they taste in his mouth. He's dead but not gone, but B.J. can't reach him. Not that he can tell Peggy that. 

“Oh B.J., oh honey,” comes Peg’s response, and B.J. doesn’t last two seconds before breaking down completely. What he wouldn’t give for a hug. 

“I just don’t– I don’t know what to _do_.” He’s talking about here, at the unit; he’s talking about in Korea, he’s talking about in the swamp each night, he’s talking about his whole goddamn life. He just feels adrift; off kilter. Like Hawkeye had reached into him, removed the lynchpin holding his precariously balanced life together, and taken it with him to the grave, leaving B.J. holding all the pieces together with his bare hands. There's silence on the other end of the line.

“Do you need to talk about it? I mean… talk properly about it.” B.J. catches that there’s a meaning in Peg’s voice that he doesn’t quite want to understand. 

“In– in what way?”

“Well… I mean, I just–” she sighs, and he can tell that it’s her ‘I’m deciding whether to bring this up now’ sigh. “I know… I know how close you were. I could feel it in your letters; you spoke of him… so fondly.” There's a sincere kindness in her voice that makes his throat threaten to close up again.

Potter saying something similar had sent B.J. into an instant rage, but hearing it from Peg just makes his insides twist into complicated, terrifying knots. Does she know? Does he want her to know? Does B.J. even know what it is he does or doesn’t want her to know? It’s a lot to think about in the space of a few seconds, and B.J. has to pull away from the receiver just in case he makes some revealing noise of anguish.

Waiting back home for him is everything he’d ever wished for. A beautiful, wonderful wife who he loves dearly, a gorgeous baby girl who he adores beyond all reason, and a little beachfront house he’s sure he saw on a postcard once when he was younger; in fact that's probably where he got the idea from. It’s picturesque, it's the all-American dream, it’s the apple-pie-and-hotdog life to go with B.J.’s apple-pie-and-hotdog face, as Hawkeye might say; and yet there’s always been a nagging feeling deep inside him that no medical degree or marriage certificate or mortgage repayment had ever managed to fix. 

Before Korea, he’d resolved to just forget about it as best he could, and live the life he’d always imagined for himself. But… then came war, and with it came Hawkeye. He was a whirlwind of life and vitality in a landscape so bleak it had almost crushed B.J. on his first day; it would have done, had it not been for Hawkeye's infectious presence, and that lifelong nagging feeling that B.J. had become so good at ignoring had pulled him towards Hawkeye like some invisible tether, tightening day by day. And still he buried it as deep as he could. It was terrifying to try and come to terms with the fact that every vision he had of his future had come to include Hawkeye in some way, like he was spilled ink that had soaked through every page of a beloved, dog-eared book. 

And now he’s gone, B.J. forces himself to concede; so maybe he owes it to Hawkeye – to himself – to actually let himself think about it properly. 

It feels like it's been a long time coming, he thinks; accepting that he’s in love with Hawkeye. 

The thought occurs so casually, so easily, that even just realising he’s thought it feels simultaneously like a shocking punch to the gut and also like it's the first appearance of something that’s been standing nervously in the wings for the past several months, just waiting for B.J. to give it the right cue. 

He realises he hasn’t spoken in minutes.

“I— Peggy, I…” How on earth does he even begin to explain what he’s feeling, what he’s felt this whole time? It was possible to believe, back in sunny California with the world as his oyster, that it would work out, that he could keep it up forever; what’s living, really, if not acting. But now? “It’s... being here — it’s changed me Peg, and not just in that it made me a soldier or it made me see the world differently, it— it’s shown me things about myself that I—I was too busy, or too comfortable to think about before. It’s life and death one minute and then incurable boredom in between and I— and Hawkeye, he… he—”

“I know, B.J., I know.” And somehow, B.J. feels like Peg does know. He supposes he’d given her hints in the past; vague words left hanging mid sentence where he caught himself too late, a few anecdotes not quite adding up. She’s a smart woman, and she knows B.J. probably better than anyone else, so if anyone was going to have filled in the gaps and come to the conclusion that B.J. wasn’t all he tried to put himself across as, it would be Peg.

“I’m so sorry, Peg, I’m really so sorry,” the apology feels like an instinct. He’s been selfish, and cruel. How could he do this to her? To Erin? He’d tried to build a life on unstable foundations, and any collateral damage from the fallout now lands squarely on his shoulders. He’s supposed to fix things, not break them; that’s all he’s here to do.

“B.J., don’t ever apologise, not about this.” She’s imploring – trying to make him believe her. “You’ve been a wonderful husband, and you’re _still_ going to be an incredible father; you _are_ an incredible father. I want you to live the life you deserve, full of as much love as possible. I—” she pauses as her voice wavers. “We’ve both changed, B.J., in so many ways, but I want you to know that you’ll always be my best friend, and I’ll always want you in my life in some way.”

B.J. feels the weight of the world lift off his shoulders and his heart break all over again. Timing sure is a bitch. If only he’d had this conversation while Hawkeye was still here 

“Thank you, Peg, I— I do love you, it's important to me that you know that, but… it’s—” he flounders, struggling for words.

“I know, B.J., I know.” He can hear the sad smile in her voice. “And I’m so, so sorry about Hawkeye. I really, truly am.” 

They would have liked each other, B.J. thinks. 

***

Hawkeye returns to his new favourite thinking spot; up on the hill, overlooking the mountains in the fading light of the afternoon, it's easy to pretend that everything’s still normal. Or, as normal as they were before he heroically bit the big one in a spectacular display of hippocratic dedication; back when he’d been part of something, and people had seen him as a part of their somethings too. 

He’d never had a big family; first it was just Mom and Dad, and then just Dad, with a few extended family members they saw in on holidays. Despite the horrors of war (or maybe precisely because of them), working here had given him more family than he’d ever dreamed of, and he’d planned on staying in touch with them for as long as he could. 

He’d pay Charles an unexpected ‘work related’ visit, maybe phone ahead and turn up to the hospital while he’s working, just to get a rise out of him. They’d fight about it, but Hawkeye knows that deep down he’d be glad to see him, and he’d smile that oh-so-aristocratic half smirk that Hawkeye’s come to take as a victory. 

He’d take his Dad out to visit Potter and his wife for a weekend — he’s sure they’d get on like a house on fire. Hawkeye’s not too good at bridge himself, but he and Dad would still try to give the Potters a run for their money, just for the thrill of playing cards in an actual home rather than in a supply tent.

He’d catch up with Mulcahy, maybe go and see one of his sister’s basketball games, maybe goad the good Father into playing some poker with him; for real stakes though, not the tiny amounts they played for at the unit. 

He’d drive out to Toledo one summer and meet Klinger’s family. Maybe they’d all go to a ball game, even though Hawkeye doesn’t care for the sport, and they’d eat hotdogs and drink cold beers and sit on plastic chairs outside some run-down old cafe until the sun started to set. 

He’d go further out after that, to go stay on Radar’s farm for a week, and finally meet his mother and her going-steady boyfriend. Maybe the pair of them would get married, and the whole gang would get back together again for the occasion. They’d have a beautiful little ceremony in amongst the crops, and a party that would last long into the night. 

He’d visit Margaret, wherever she ended up, and they’d go for drinks and tease each other senseless, comfortable knowing that neither of them were being serious. They’d stay out walking the streets until morning, telling stories about the old days like real friends do, and Hawkeye would tell as many jokes as it took to always keep her laughing. 

He’d want to see B.J. most of all, he knows, but therein lies the problem. He wouldn’t want to just _visit_ B.J.; what he’d really want (if he’s letting himself really go all out with the wishful thinking) is to not _need_ to visit him, because they’d be together. 

They’d wake up next to each other each morning, cook breakfast for each other, go to work in the clinic together; a nice general practice like his dad's though. He’d be willing to bet on B.J. having had enough of surgery too, at least for a while. They’d come home each evening, tired but in the way a good life makes you tired, and they'd sit out on the porch until they grew old, playing chess and listening to the ocean; either the Atlantic or the Pacific, Hawkeye wouldn’t mind either way. Maybe they'd live in San Francisco while Erin grew up; they’d have her round all the time and Hawkeye would take her down to the rock pools and teach her about all the sea creatures he knows, and B.J. would put her up on his shoulders and they’d walk hand in hand down to the shore, letting the warm water brush against their toes. 

He would want all that and more, if he could have it. But he can’t. One, because it’s impossible for the usual reasons — B.J. is happily married, B.J. doesn’t like men, the world is still a sphere — and two, because he’s nothing more than an echo, standing up on a hill in Korea, imagining a life he won’t get to have. 

I need to let him move on, he thinks, like it's the conclusion he’s been patiently waiting for himself to come to. He can’t stay here like this, half alive and half dead. B.J. already _has_ a life, one where Alive Hawkeye didn’t even factor into the equation, so there’s no way a dead Hawkeye will be able to slot himself in there somewhere. 

He knows he’d follow B.J. to the ends of the earth, but he also knows that he shouldn’t. If only for all the incredible good he did Hawkeye in the midst of the most horrendous experience of his life, B.J. deserves to properly grieve and move on and go back to his family the same way he left them; whole and perfect, and not with some invisible dead friend hanging round like a bad smell. 

_I’ll go for good,_ Hawkeye decides, somehow knowing intrinsically that it’s a choice he has the power to make. 

He just needs to tell B.J. goodbye first.

***

B.J. leaves the clerk's office feeling like he’s been wrung out. He’d stayed on the phone to Peg as long as he could after that life-altering first ten minutes, just discussing Erin and letting Peg coax him into talking a little more about Hawkeye. They’d been careful with how they spoke, given the new element of danger in talking about B.J.’s feelings, but he hopes that to anyone else it would have just sounded like telling stories about an old friend. An old _dead_ friend, he reminds himself in a way that feels a little masochistic. 

He stands in the yard for a minute, hands in his pockets, looking out across the camp. He sees a couple of nurses walking together, arms linked. He sees Charles, through the Swamp’s transparent side, with his feet up on his bed, reading quietly, no music to be heard. He sees Klinger and the Colonel in Sophie’s paddock, diligently mucking out the old hay. He wonders where Hawkeye is right now. 

“Hey,” a voice says from behind him, making him jump, and Margaret comes into view, still wearing her white coat, like as if she’s uncharacteristically bunking off post-op duty. She stands next to him, and bumps him with her hip. “How’re you doing?”

“Hmm,” he hums with a slight chuckle (even though it's not really funny). “I’ve certainly been better. It’s… it's quieter, don’t you think?” 

She laughs lightly (even though it still isn’t really funny), and folds her arms in front of her. “I’ve been thinking that all day. He’s been away for longer than two days before, but it feels…”

“Quieter,” B.J. finishes. 

They stand in companionable silence for a minute, letting the rare moment of peace soothe at their frayed edges. 

“I just got off the phone with Peg,” B.J. says, surprising himself by disclosing it. 

“Oh?” Margaret replies, turning up to look at him. 

“We’ve… well, we decided to call it quits, on the whole marriage thing.” Margaret’s the only other person he knows who’s been through something similar, albeit for different reasons. 

“Oh...?” she repeats, this time with a small frown. She’s quiet for a minute, and B.J. looks over to find her looking back at him searchingly. “I… can I ask why?”

“You can,” he says easily, some heat prickling at the back of his neck, “but the answer is… complicated. It’s…” Does he want to get into this right now? Should he get into this right now? Margaret is a friend, sure, but he knows that being in love with another man – and a dead one at that – isn’t _usually_ considered polite conversation, even among friends. This is entirely new territory for B.J., and he looks away from her, trying to decide. 

“Is— is it something to do with… Hawkeye?” B.J. looks back at her, probably a little too quickly to be nonchalant. There isn’t any judgement in her face that he can see; just concern, and a little sadness. 

“I…” Admitting it to Peg was one thing, but Margaret is something else. The more people he lets in on his secret (because it has to be a secret, of course it does), the more real it becomes. 

“Yeah,” he says eventually, impossibly quiet. “It’s... I—” He feels like he might cry again, but he's positive there can’t be any more tears left in him at this point. 

Margaret reaches out and puts her arm around his waist, squeezing him to her side a little, comforting, and leans her head against his shoulder. 

“I think I know the feeling,” she says slowly, and cryptically, given the sparse words in B.J.’s sentence. “Not about Hawkeye, I mean, but… I think, I know.”

“I—” he stumbles. If he’s catching Margaret’s meaning correctly, then maybe he’s not quite as alone as he first thought he was. “Can I... ask about who, then?”

“You can,” she replies with a sad sort of smile at the repetition. “Do you remember Helen? Whitfield? She was here a few months ago, but transferred out again because of… well, just because,” she half-shrugs as she says it, feigning detachment. B.J. nods; he remembers. “Well, me and her, we… I’ve known her forever. We both grew up in the military, went to basic training together, everything. She’s…” She looks up at B.J. again now, meeting his gaze, searching for something; reassurance, maybe. B.J. deliberately keeps his expression open, kind, the way she did for him. “I’ve loved her as long as I can remember. Loved her the way… the way I couldn’t love Donald, or Frank, or anyone else.” 

He’s shocked to hear her say it out loud, but then a warm, light feeling spreads through his chest for the first time in days. He puts an arm around her shoulders and squeezes back. 

“I’m so sorry about Hawkeye,” she whispers. “I really, really miss him.” 

B.J. just holds her tighter and wills the world to be different. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the final chapter should hopefully be done before the end of january, and even more hopefully well before then. like maybe in the next few days. don't hold me to it :) <3


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy ending! i told you! didn't i promise!

It’s early the next morning when B.J. wakes, groggy and still tired from a fitful night’s sleep. He rolls over, debating whether or not to keep trying, but as he settles on his other side his eyes lock onto Hawkeye’s empty bed and he decides he’d rather go for a walk. 

He dresses as quietly as he can in order to avoid worried looks from Charles, who alarmingly seems to have dropped all pretence of not caring one way or another about him since Hawkeye died. They all have, honestly; B.J. can’t walk into the mess tent without at least a ‘hi, Beej, how are you doing today?’ B.J. appreciates it in a detached, unemotional sort of way, but at the same time it just acts as a reminder that they’re now living in a world A.H.; After Hawkeye. Obviously only _he_ knows Hawkeye is still around, but even so, people acting like he isn’t just makes B.J. feel… bad, is the easiest descriptor.

He steps out into the dawn light and breathes deeply, before setting off towards the entrance to the camp, final destination unplanned. 

Needing to see Hawkeye is his first, overwhelming thought as he strolls, hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets. He refuses to believe that seeing him that day was a one time thing; in fact he _knows_ it wasn’t a one time thing. The first night when he thought Hawk had come back, when really he was already dead, _that_ was the first time, the story and the song had been the second, and two coincidences is only one instance away from a pattern. Or so he hopes. He desperately, desperately hopes.

Like as though his thoughts act as the jolt of electricity needed to turn on a switch, a figure appears in the corner of his eye that he could _swear_ hadn’t been there a second before. Stood on the top of the helicopter landing site, a few hundred yards from where he’s just come to an abrupt halt, is a ghostly figure, glimmering in the morning light that's _just_ cresting over the mountains. B.J. stares for a second and then starts walking quicker in an effort to get up there, heart immediately beating wildly in his chest. 

The prospect of coming back to the swamp at the end of every difficult day had become an anchor-point in B.J.’s life in Korea. He’d been telling himself it was something about a recreation of a home-like environment, something to remind him of Mill Valley; staying as close as he could to the original script while he was away from the stage. But, as he’d only recently come to realise, it was actually just Hawkeye. Stripped of any pretence or additions, seeing Hawkeye every day had become his lifeline. 

When it comes to how Hawkeye feels about _him_ , he’s not blind; he’s seen the way Hawk looks at him, when he thinks it’s too dark to be noticeable or when they’re both drunk enough to let their guards slip that extra inch. Repression is a hell of a drug, but it’s a consciously taken one, in B.J.’s case. Fear of the unknown, of uncertainty, of change, of repercussions; all this and more had stopped B.J. from making that mental leap and finally closing the gap between them — a gap that had been slowly narrowing of its own accord anyway, especially in these last few weeks and months.

B.J. knows that he’s been a toxic optimist at many points in his life, has ignored hard realities in order to protect himself from the loss of certain futures, but this time it doesn’t feel forced, or counterproductive. Hawkeye isn’t _entirely_ gone, or completely beyond reach, and B.J. is tired of denying himself happiness out of martyrdom or shame, knows that if he can feel the way he does right now — heart overflowing, feeling like it’s fit to burst from all the love he’s suddenly allowing himself to feel — just from the anticipation of seeing an _echo_ of Hawkeye, then he’ll selfishly take every second of it he can get. 

Even though he knows it probably won't end well, and he knows life will be complicated if Hawkeye feels the same (and worse if he doesn’t, though that's a thought for later on), he wants however much he can have, for as long as he can have it; good sense and fear be damned.

Hawkeye turns as he hears B.J. coming up behind him, boots crunching on the dry earth. They lock eyes, Hawkeye grins, and B.J. has to seriously try to resist the temptation to throw himself on him. Going straight through and landing on his face probably wouldn’t be a good look. 

“Hi,” he says instead, with a grin of his own. “Long time no see.” 

“Yeah,” Hawk says, a smile fading slightly. “I tried to get through to you all of yesterday and the day before, but nothing seemed to work. I’m not sure why it’s working now, honestly.”

“Me neither,” B.J. shrugs, “but maybe we can… test it, try and learn the rules. There has to be a pattern.” 

The remainder of Hawk’s smile slips away, and B.J. feels the first stirrings of worry seep into his initial happiness. Hawkeye turns back to face the mountains, lowers himself to sit cross-legged on the ground, and looks back, patting the floor next to him and inviting B.J. down too. B.J. sits, suddenly extremely aware of the small distance between them in a way he never has been before. They don’t talk, and B.J.’s pulse pounds in his ears. He should tell him, he thinks, and he opens his mouth to—

***

“I think I’m going to go,” Hawkeye says, breaking the silence. 

Out of the corner of his eye he sees B.J. turn to look at him, mouth open like he'd been about to speak, his brow furrowed. “Go... where?”

“Like, go _away,_ " Hawkeye says. "Y’know... for good. Like a proper dead person.” 

A pause. Hawkeye has his eyes trained painfully on the hills stretching out in front of them. 

“You think this as in… you can feel it happening, or you think this as in it's a decision you’re making yourself?”

“Both,” Hawk replies, deliberately keeping his tone light. “But mostly the second one.”

B.J. is quiet, but Hawkeye can feel the other man gearing up to argue. He reminds himself that he can’t be swayed. He has to let B.J. go, for his own sake.

“And you expect me to just… what? Say fare-thee-well and send you off?” B.J. looks irritated now, to Hawkeye's dismay. 

“Well, in as many words, yeah.” He'd been expecting some resistance, so he rehearsed his lines ahead of time, conter-arguments learned by rote. “It’s just – I probably won’t be able to stay forever. And even if I _was_ able to, what would I do? One day the war _will_ end, and you’ll go home where you belong and I’ll be… what? Haunting this field forever? Back home knocking ‘round Crabapple cove, floating about my father’s practice? No thanks, I’d rather just be gone.” He wouldn’t, not really. Yeah, once upon a time he _would_ have meant it, but it’s not once upon a time anymore. Now, given the choice, he’d rather see B.J. every day than see nothing; be nothing. He wants to keep seeing B.J. for as long as he can.

“Don’t.” B.J. looks mildly panicked. “Don’t leave.”

“Beej, I—”

“No, Hawk, you can’t leave. I don’t want you to go.” 

“It’s not really a matter of _want_ , if we’re being frank. Which, given his lack of chin, I generally try my hardest not to be.” 

B.J. turns his whole body properly around to kneel facing him now, a desperate gleam in his eyes that Hawkeye equally desperately tries to imagine isn’t there. 

“You— you’ve got a chance at life, Hawkeye, you’re dead, but you’re still _here_ ; surely there's a reason for that? I want—”

“I’m not coming back, Beej, and no amount of saying otherwise will change that fact. I'm invisible seventy percent of the time, can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t touch anything — that’s not exactly what I'd call living, Beej.” He hesitates; should he say what he really means? “Being— being around you, that feels as close as I think it can get to ‘alive’, anymore, but—”

“They stay with me,” Beej implores, looking like he’s gearing up for a longer speech.

“You can’t split yourself in two,” Hawkeye counters, preempting whatever was about to come out of B.J.’s mouth. “You’re the only one who can see me. You can’t bring an old army buddy round to meet the wife and kids if everyone else on earth thinks he’s dead. No–– _knows_ he’s dead. I’m dead and gone, B.J., and it was selfish of me to ever even—” he stops himself from finishing the thought; it feels too much like a confession to say out loud. He loves B.J. too much for any of this to sound like anything _other_ than a confession, but B.J. never seems to notice, and Hawkeye never knows whether to be thankful that he doesn't. 

“Just…” Hawk says, looking anywhere but at him. Sometimes what you _really_ want to say just isn’t what needs saying. “Make sure you tell Erin what a cool guy you were friends with during the war. Well, before he got horribly blown to bits, that is. I’d hate for her to think I was normal and boring. _Or_ blown to bits, for that matter. You can tell her we were the Abbott and Costello of the Korean war, I think that's a worthy stretching of the truth. Even if they found us irritating as a double act, everyone here will corroborate it, probably just out of respect for the dead if not respect for our blazing comedic timing—”

“Hawk, you’re not _listening_ to me," B.J. cuts in through his nervous babbling. "I _want_ to stay with you. Even like this.”

Hawkeye growls somewhere in the back of his throat, irritated that B.J. isn’t understanding him. “Look, Beej, I— we can’t keep this up. I’m— I mean, I am quite _literally_ dead. Like, not alive anymore. And yeah, if we're being honest then for however long I last like this the only thing I _really_ wanna do is spend time with you, and I know you know that, god knows there’s nothing else good in my strange little afterlife right now, but it just won’t last!” The more Hawkeye presses the matter, the more B.J.’s scowl grows. “You have a _family_ Beej. You have a wife and daughter that you love, back home in Mill Valley. I’d hate to see you throw all that love away just to hang around with a– a fucking wisecracking idiot _dead guy!”_

“You _think_ you know all about that,” B.J. says, much calmer than Hawk expected judging by the look on his face. “But there are conversations Peggy and I have had; conversations that you don’t— _couldn’t_ know about.” He pauses, seemingly having had a sudden thought. “Unless… unless you were listening yesterday?”

“No, god no,” he replies emphatically, irritation momentarily forgotten and replaced with confusion. “I would never, Beej.” Truthfully the last thing Hawkeye wants to do right now is listen to B.J. on the phone to his wife; the anniversary video had almost killed him. He has nothing against Peg personally, of course, in fact he’s sure that any woman B.J. loves would be someone he would like too, but being in deep homosexual love with her husband doesn’t _exactly_ help a budding friendship on its way. Not that he’s going to be making any new friends in his current state anyway.

All that aside, he would never invade B.J.’s privacy like that. In other ways, yes, and especially when it's funny. But never like that. 

“However, I’m still not catching your drift,” he continues, volume back down to a normal level. “Is this another one of your ‘you can’t understand, you’re not married’ type deals? Because, frankly, I’ve heard enough of that to last me a _lifetime_. And I’m not even going to make the joke that naturally follows that statement because it feels too obvious even for me.”

“Hawk, I—” B.J. stops for a second, exasperated and thinking hard. “I—I love Peg the same way I love... sunsets, or—or _wildflowers_. Or my favourite book. She’s beautiful, she’s interesting, she’s comforting. She brought my daughter into the world. Peg is… she’s everything a man could want.”

Now Hawkeye _really_ can’t see where this is going. If B.J. came up here just to argue with him and then confess love for his wife, then he might have to either try to disappear on purpose or jump in and say something — he knows this, knows it like a person knows a scar they’ve had for decades. 

But then B.J. steps in close to Hawkeye — _extremely_ close — and brushes a warm, living hand through the vague outline of Hawkeye’s own transparent one, making him jump at the sensation. 

They’ve been almost as close as this before, but never without a prerequisite. Hawkeye thought he knew the rules; there had to be a setup for this sort of thing. He would often _forget_ the rules and would grab at B.J. without even thinking about it, but they both silently agreed to never discuss those moments. Hawk lets himself look down at where their hands intersect, right in the middle of his palm, and through the translucent sheen of his own palm B.J.’s fingers shimmer like coloured shells, shining up through shallow waters. 

“But,” Beej continues, and Hawkeye drags his eyes back up to his face. “Me and Peg are... I—I love Peg the way a person loves their best friend, not the way a person loves their wife. Or _should_ love their wife, at least, and I think on some level I always knew that. Meeting you just made it… clearer. We talked it over, and we both know where we stand now, so don’t… I just mean, if that’s the issue, then don’t worry about it.” 

There's a soft breeze that Hawkeye can’t really feel, but he sees it pick up strands of B.J.s hair, and his heart rate – or maybe his memory of what a heart rate should feel like – spikes. Despite the lightness of the air, the space around them feels heavy with unsaid things, and he senses that B.J. is about to cross some unspoken line that they’ve only ever dared to toe at before. Hawkeye holds his tongue. Whatever’s coming next, he feels like it would be for the best if he didn’t ruin it with some pointless quip or another repeated argument. He already has B.J.s full attention; no need to go out of his way trying to capture it. 

“Hawk, you’re—” B.J. breaks eye contact and looks out across the valley, scanning the hills like the words he’s searching for might be written across them. He looks back at Hawk a moment later with more than enough life in his expression for the both of them. “That first day, at the airport? When you told that stupid joke and I said something about Rudyard Kipling, do you remember?”

Hawkeye’s instinct, again, is to say something clever to try and clear the lump forming in his throat, but he’s learnt that sometimes a question just needs a straight answer.

“Of course,” he whispers. He remembers it like a person remembers their birthday. It’s built in at this point.

“Well, when you turned around, that little double take? In my whole life, that was the first time it ever felt like anyone had really, truly, _looked_ at me; the first time anyone had bothered to look twice. I felt like, when _you_ looked at me, it was because there was something worth _trying_ to understand, even if you didn’t always.” There’s something imploring in B.J.’s gaze. “Do you get what I’m trying to say?”

Hawkeye finally allows himself to slot together some puzzle pieces he’s been keeping locked up in his head, as far away as possible from each other so that each of them were unaware of the other’s existences. He feels like maybe he does understand. He so, so desperately feels like he might, but even here, even now, there are some things you just don’t dare hope for. _Even_ if they're staring you square in the face, their hand cut through with yours. 

He does a half nod, half shake of his head that just sort of turns into a circular motion, and B.J. smiles, the burgeoning tears in his eyes only just noticeable. 

“I love you, Hawkeye,” Beej whispers, and Hawkeye feels the earth shift beneath him. “If loving Peg is like all those other things, then loving you is like… it's like breathing. I need it, and at the same time I don’t even have to think about it. Maybe that’s why it took me so long to be able to call it what it is. Losing you… I’d never felt like my world was caving in before, but I felt it then, and I’m sorry it took you dying for me to realise that what I felt for you was the most love — the most _romantic_ love —that I've ever felt for anyone. Whatever time you have left like this, I want to be with you. But _with_ you, with you. If you’ll have me.” 

Hawkeye’s eyes fill with tears to the point where B.J. is just a hazy blob of light and colour standing in front of him. This cannot be real. Maybe it isn’t real, he thinks suddenly. Maybe when he’d died, he actually _had_ gone to heaven, and it was just that heaven looked a lot like normal life except B.J. Hunnicutt was in love with him and said it out loud. 

He opens his mouth to reply, hoping the right words will come to him, but then all at once the swimming image of B.J. in front of him fades, and everything fades, and he’s standing in an endless expanse of blinding white light far away from the helicopter landing site of the 4077th M*A*S*H. 

***

B.J. stands, silently staring into the space that Hawkeye just vacated. Disappeared from. Faded into. Whatever. He can’t be too surprised. If this is the life he’s choosing, then this is part of it too. He just wishes he’d gotten a reply first. 

Running a hand through his hair and feeling like he might cry, he walks over to a nearby tree and slumps against it. He’s not due in post-op for a few hours. He’ll just wait this time, and see if Hawkeye comes back. 

***

“Wh— Beej?!” Hawkeye turns around wildly, looking everywhere, but all he can see is white. “Where the hell am I? This better not be heaven, please don’t let it be heaven. Things just started to go my way down there and honestly I don’t want to have to deal with the personal and cultural ramifications of heaven being a real thing.” He spins around desperately as he’s speaking, not entirely sure who he’s talking to, if anyone. “Hello?!”

A figure appears, followed by another, and another. They’re… blurry, and washed out at the edges, like he’s looking at the seascape watercolour in his hallway back home through the frosted glass of the front door. 

“Friend, or foe,” he shouts, putting on a voice in the hopes that it’ll give him some bravado, but it doesn’t quite work. “Who— who are you? I can’t see a thing in here; where am I?”

The first figure steps closer. They’re the tallest of the bunch, almost exactly Hawkeye’s height. _No_ , Hawk thinks, as they come within a few feet; _exactly my height_. As his eyes continue to adjust to the blinding white of his surroundings, he gets more and more detail about the person now standing just an arms length away from him. Male, presumably; dark hair; kind of hunched up, like he’s nervous about something. 

“You want to relax your shoulders there, pal,” Hawkeye says just for something to say. “You’ll get a terrible backache. I should know, I’m just about thirty and I feel like a geriatric already.”

The guy laughs, and Hawkeye's heart skips several beats.

“God, don’t _ever_ call anyone _pal._ I never realised what an ass I sounded like when I said that.”

“Holy shit,” Hawkeye breathes. “I’m— you’re—”

“I’m you, yeah,” the other Hawkeye says. Hawkeye – the _proper_ Hawkeye, the original – blinks furiously, forcing his vision to come fully into focus. In front of him, wearing a grimy old scrubs from the M*A*S*H and looking like he hasn’t slept in a week, is _himself_ , albeit with slightly less grey hair at the temples. 

“Do you want to be alive again?"

Hawkeye blinks. “ _What?”_

“Sorry, sorry, introductions. I’m _you,_ and these guys—” he gestures behind him, to the two other figures now coming into focus, “are also you. We’ve got a veritable smorgasbord of Pierces in here. Shame there's no booze, we could've had a get together. Not that the little guy could've any anyway.”

Hawkeye looks around at the other two and sure enough, they do both appear to be him too. The three of them are all very different ages, though, which feels… strange. It’s one thing to see yourself about the same age as you are now; it’s pretty much like looking in a mirror. But the other two Hawkeyes are younger — _much_ younger. The smallest looks no older than six or seven, and he’s looking at Hawkeye warily from where he stands at the back of the pack, dripping wet. In front of him is Hawkeye in his college years (he can tell by the cardigan; he remembers losing it in his final year). He looks younger and somehow tireder than Hawkeye remembers feeling at the time, though. Strangely, he also appears to be wet through, his jet black hair sticking stringily to his forehead.

“I— who _are_ you guys? I mean, you’re all me, obviously, but how? _Why?_ And once again, y’know, just in case you didn’t hear the first few times: where the _hell_ are we?”

The oldest of the three smiles at him, something sad in his eyes that Hawkeye doesn’t like looking at. 

“None of us _really_ know where we are. Little Hawk’s been here the longest and even he doesn’t know for _sure_.” Hawkeye looks over at said little Hawk, who blushes at the attention and moves slightly further behind college-age Hawkeye. “Personally, I think it's some sort of holding room,” the oldest one says.

“Wh— a holding room how-so? Like— like what… like purgatory or something?” 

“Or something _,_ ” he replies, folding his arms across his chest and shifting his weight. “My working theory is that us four are all just different possible endings of our collective life. Like—like individual loose threads that make up a bigger rope, except _our_ threads got cut short, frayed off.” He pauses, almost like he’s waiting for a response, but Hawkeye’s not really in the right headspace to contribute right now, so the other Hawkeye continues. 

“It feels like we’re being… _collected_ up here. I think one day, when some future version of Hawkeye is the oldest age we could possibly be — maybe ninety odd, living in some little shack somewhere, maybe alone, maybe not — we’ll die for the last possible time, and then... that’ll be it. All done, we all vanish. I hope.” 

“I— _what_?” Hawkeye’s never wanted a drink so badly in his life.

“It’s like,” the older Hawkeye sighs, tilting his head slightly in a gesture Hawkeye recognises as his own thinking face. “It’s like a horse race. Except all the horses are you; or, well, _us_. Yeah, all the horses are us, however many there might be, and all of us are running this race, except there’s no set finish line. We just keep running, and running, until one by one each one of us drops out, or hits a tree, or just collapses from exhaustion. Eventually, there’s one horse left, and he goes and goes until _he_ dies too, and wherever he drops is the finish line; congratulations, well done, the race has now ended for everyone. That’s our collective life; whoever finishes the race is the final version of all our possible endings. But the horses that dropped _during_ the race didn’t just disappear from the track. They’re still there, waiting for the race to end so someone’ll come along with a big dead-horse-collection truck and clear them all away to get turned into glue. We’re the dead horses strewn about the track. Or that’s what _I_ think we are, anyway; just conjecture really. Something to think about to pass the time.” 

Hawkeye is trying extremely hard to process everything. He looks over to catch college-age Hawkeye’s eye; he just shrugs noncommittally, not quite meeting his gaze.

“Oh-kay,” Hawkeye eventually says, tentatively, looking back at the older one. “So how did _you_ die?” 

He winces. “You remember that bug out, the one a couple of months after B.J. first arrived?” Hawkeye nods; he remembers it too vividly for comfort. “Well… where _you_ miraculously escaped that particular suicidal sleepover, the Hawkeye, Margaret and Radar of _my_ timeline were not… quite so lucky.”

“You all died? All three of you?” Hawkeye stares, open mouthed.

“Yep,” the other Hawkeye smiles sadly. “Us and that spinal cord patient.”

Hawkeye thinks for a second; that must mean… “Are Margaret and Radar here too? Do you get to see them?”

“Oh, _yeah,_ we meet up for coffee every Thursday; there’s a door somewhere here that takes you out to fifth avenue,” the older Hawkeye deadpans, and little Hawk lets out a laugh to which Hawkeye responds with a scoff. 

“Well how am I supposed to know! It’s— wait, hold on, you said something about being alive again? Ignoring _everything_ else, can we revisit _that_?”

Older Hawkeye grins. “Now, this is the fantastic part, you’re gonna love it, I promise. Okay, so, we’ve had some words with some higher-ups—”

“Higher-ups? What do you mean, higher-ups? Like— like what, like a _God_?”

“Can’t tell you, I’d have to kill you, and you think I’m joking but I’m not. Don’t interrupt. Now—”

“Can’t kill me if I’m already dead.” That earns him a glare. 

“God, we really _do_ always have to get the last word in, and B.J.’s right, it really _is_ irritating. If I send you back you have to promise to stop doing that.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die. Again.” He even crosses his heart and everything, just to show how serious he is. Other Hawkeye rolls his eyes.

“ _Anyway,_ the _h_ _ow_ of it all isn’t really important. What _is_ important is that you’re being given a second chance, but on one condition. See—” he looks back at the other two, and they all seem to share a long moment of telepathic deliberation, excluding Hawkeye. Which, he supposes, is only fair; they are all the same person after all, mind-reading probably comes with the territory once you’ve been here long enough. “The thing is…” the older Hawkeye turns back to face him. “When _we_ all died, we didn’t come back as ghosts, _at all_. Only you did that.”

That’s not something Hawkeye had expected to hear. When he’d finally come to the conclusion that he was no longer anything more than a consciousness and occasional apparition, he subconsciously assumed that that’s just what happens when you die; mystery solved. Looking back, though, for a busy aid station in the middle of a battleground, there _had_ been a suspicious absence of any other ghostly life forms hanging about when he’d first sat up out of his own dead body.

“So... why _me_ then? What did I do to earn haunting privileges?”

“We’ve been trying to figure that out. Your condition for going back, or so we’ve been told, is to work it out yourself. Unfinished business is the most likely reason, if we’re going by general convention. At first I thought maybe it was because you were in love with Beej—” (hearing that come out of someone else's mouth, even if the someone else is still technically himself, makes Hawkeyes mouth go dry and his knees feel a little shaky) “—but then _I_ was too when I died, so we decided it probably wasn’t that. The only real explanation could be…” other Hawkeye pauses, looking at him almost knowingly. “Was there something you’d been planning? Something just before you died?”

Hawkeye thinks, and comes up blank. _Had_ he been planning something? The timeline in his mind has a big empty space right where he’s trying to recall from, it seems. “I… I can’t remember anything at all from just before I died,” he rubs at his forehead as he says it, like it might prompt the memories to come back. “Is that normal?” 

“I don’t know about _everyone,_ but for us four, yes, it's normal. You’ve just gotta relax into it, it’ll come back to you. Don’t force it.”

“Yeah, perfect,” Hawkeye scoffs, “I’ll take a _relaxing_ stroll down death-memory lane.” Other Hawkeye rolls his eyes — again. He’d never realised what a habit that was. Maybe he should try and cut down if he actually does make it back alive.

“Just try,” other Hawkeye sighs. 

So he tries. He thinks back to the last thing he remembers; writing the will. First the robe for Charles, then the nickel for Mulcahy; Margaret got his Groucho nose and glasses, and Potter his copy of Last of the Mohicans. Klinger got his favourite Hawaiian shirt, and Beej… see, B.J. is where it gets really fuzzy. He’s almost positive he ended up not writing anything, but he _knows_ he must’ve thought about it; he’s enough in tune with himself to know that given five minutes alone with his thoughts, B.J. comes up at least once, often twice. Frequently thrice, if he's being honest. But he can’t remember what he thought _this_ time. If it's important enough to get him stuck just beyond the veil but not _quite_ six-feet-under, where three previous versions of him hadn’t had any trouble, then it must’ve been something big. 

He tries — really tries — to remember the conditions he was in, just because it’s probably something Sidney would say; recall the environment and the memories will follow. He remembers hearing gunfire, and explosions; unexpected by all of them, they’d hunkered down for the night only to be ripped away from sleep by the renewed sounds of war. A battalion had been forced down the valley by unanticipated bombing, and the men were retreating their way. 

He remembers putting the will away, deep in his inside jacket pocket, where it sat against his heart like a cold, hard weight. He remembers rushing to stand outside the station door, reaching to grab at the soldiers hobbling towards them, and seeing flashes of light in the dark as explosions light up the mountainside like fireworks. He remembers a pain, sharp and incessant, and he remembers a thought; a promise. 

He’d promised, either to himself or some unknown entity, that there was something he’d do if he got out of there alive. After all, there’s nothing like a near death experience to make you commit to things you’d never ordinarily dream of doing. Usually, from conversations with some of the kids in post-op, it was talking to estranged family members again, or going back to church, or giving up the booze. So what would Hawkeye–– 

_God_ , he thinks suddenly; he’s an _idiot._ Of course that’s what it was. He remembers lying on the ground outside the aid station, looking up at the stars through the thin veil of smoke and promising himself, the universe, _whoever,_ that he would finally take the chance and come clean to B.J.; put his heart out on the chopping block, consequences and reciprocation be damned. 

“I— I was going to tell Beej how I felt about him. I was going to—I—” the words tumble out of him, and he feels a little bit weak at the knees. In the sunken state of mind he’s been in these past few days he’d slipped into old habits again; depressive realism, general cynicism, self-isolation; again, Sidney would’ve had a field day. To be fair to himself, he _was_ dead, so a little despair should probably be allowed; but the fact remains that he’d pretty much just... given up. He’d thought of his ghostly existence as nothing worth anything. Just like that day on the bus, his judgement clouded by nihilism, he’d let go of his future and was barely even living in the present. 

The other Hawkeyes are all looking at him intently, like they’d been expecting the conclusion he came to, and Hawk finally processes the actual reality of the offer he’s being presented with.

“Are— wait, are you telling me I just get to go back? Scot-free? No catch or anything?” 

“Well, we’re all _you_ , why would we want to catch you out?” It's college Hawkeye who speaks this time, a gentle frown on his face. 

Hawkeye debates for a second before choosing the comedic route. “I don’t know, maybe you’re teeth-grindingly jealous of the dashing silver-fox look I’ve been flaunting for the past several months.” He thinks a second too late that it might be cruel to joke about ageing to a dead kid, but his younger self just rolls his eyes like the rest of them, a half smirk on his face. 

“So…” he continues, “how exactly do I go about getting back to the land of the living, then? And what'll happen when I suddenly turn up alive again?”

The three of them shrug in unison. “No idea what it'll be like down there, and as for getting there..." the older Hawkeye shrugs again.

"It might just happen,” the littlest Hawkeye says, and Hawk notices that he’s come out from behind the other two, looking more confident than when he'd first arrived. 

“Hopefully you’re right,” he offers to the kid, slowly, tentatively, thinking back on what he remembers of being that age. Curiosity, shyness around strangers, and uncontrollable volume around not-strangers are the big standouts. He can’t be more than seven by the looks of him. Which means he’s never been without Mom, Hawkeye realises suddenly. 

“What happened to you,” he asks, moving to crouch down in front of his youngest self. “How’d you end up here?”

Little Hawk shifts his feet slightly. “Fell in the lake, got stuck under the boat,” he says. Hawkeye’s breath catches in his throat; he can’t mean… well, he _could_ mean— he looks about the right age at least. He glances up quickly to catch the older Hawkeye’s eye, and the look he receives in return tells him all he needs to know. “Billy tried to get me out but he couldn’t, and then I passed out and woke up here.” 

Hawkeye tries to school his features into anything approaching a normal expression. “I’m sorry about that,” he says, voice wavering. Young Hawkeye looks at him a little funny and then shrugs.

“It’s fine, I guess. It was lonely at first, but then bigger Hawk showed up and then it wasn’t so boring.” College-age Hawkeye ruffles his hair as he says this, and little Hawk slaps his hand away with pretend irritation. “I do miss my books, though," he continues. "Sometimes one pops up here, but not always.” 

Hawkeye finds himself getting unexpectedly emotional, and he opens his arms without thinking, silently asking for a hug from the youngest of the bunch; he’s had less physical contact these past three days than he has in a long time, but as they embrace he’s struck by the symbolism of it. He’s somehow been given the strange opportunity to physically reconcile with the past; to take his younger self in with open arms, to say and seek words of comfort and reassurance. Little Hawkeye hugs him back.

“Can I ask you what you think, kiddo,” Hawkeye enquires, quietly, voice scratchy with unshed tears. “Did I do alright with everything? Is my grown up life to your liking, my liege?”

Young Hawk steps back slightly to look Hawkeye in the face, studying him. 

“Yeah, I think so. You’re pretty funny, and people say you’re a good doctor even though _I_ think being a doctor is boring. I’ve been to Dad’s office and all he ever does is sit there and read, and they’re not even interesting books, just bones and stuff. _I’d_ rather be a pirate, like in Treasure Island, and collect all sorts of creatures and stuff, like Darwin, my Dad told me all about him.” He takes a breath; always did talk too much, a voice in Hawkeye’s head supplies. Little Hawk continues. “You do shout sometimes, but it’s not really angry shouting, and you’re kind to good people,” he says matter-of-factly. “Mom always says that's the best way to be. Remember?” 

“I do,” Hawkeye replies, “and I do try.” 

“She _also_ says ‘you should be as kind to yourself as you are to others,’” young Hawkeye continues, in that tone of voice that kids use when they’re repeating something told to them many times; learned by rote. He looks at Hawkeye almost knowingly. “Do you remember that one too?”

Hawkeye chokes down a little sob that seemingly comes from nowhere. He does remember that. He remembers his mother saying it to both him and Dad often, and when she died, he remembers his father saying it on her behalf on days where Hawkeye would be overcome with guilt from an unknown source. 

“I try,” Hawkeye whispers, “I really do try. You can’t imagine how hard that is sometimes – well, I mean, you’re me too, so maybe you can, even though you’re young; I– I can't remember anything I thought when I was your age, really. I’ll keep trying though, really. I can promise you that.”

Young Hawk studies him for a moment longer, before deciding he’s satisfied with his older self’s response. He dives back in for an even tighter hug than the first time and then pulls away, catching Hawkeye off guard by reaching out with both hands to ruffle up his hair. Hawkeye laughs, still a little teary eyed, and reaches out to do the same with one of his own much larger hands. 

He stands up, knees cracking slightly as he does so. God, he’s never felt older than he does right now, looking around at his younger selves and feeling overwhelmed by a sudden wave of affection for them all. Which, he supposes, works out as affection for himself. They’re all one and the same, in the end. 

“I don’t know how to thank you all,” he says finally. “If I could repay the favour in any way—”

“Tell him you love him back,” college-age Hawkeye interrupts. He’s looking Hawkeye dead in the eye, a melancholy smile on his face. Hawkeye knows what must be going through his head, seeing him and B.J. together like that, because he remembers what he was going through back then. Mixed into an already temperamental personality and a historically shaky mental state came a wild combination of internalised bullshit, excessive alcohol consumption (even by his present standards), and the added strain of trying to complete a medical degree. 

He also remembers, with a heavy heart, the days and nights spent in anguish trying to sort out his platonic from his romantic, his should-wants from does-wants. He remembers nights spent sitting on window ledges, and stumbling blindly round canals.

He swallows down the lump in his throat and reaches up to put a reassuring hand on his other self’s shoulder, pointedly ignoring how the younger man’s clothes are damp to the touch. 

“I will,” he says, with as much sincerity as he can muster. “I promise.” College Hawkeye can’t hold his gaze, but he nods, satisfied, and Hawkeye drops his hand back down to his side.

With a final few goodbyes and one or two more tears shed, Hawkeye waves farewell to his former selves and walks off into the mist. He somehow senses exactly where it is he needs to be going, though he has no idea what waits for him there. 

***

“Ow, shit,” comes a voice, jolting B.J. from his nap. He reaches up to rub at his eyes, expecting to see one of the others coming to look for him; he must’ve slept through the start of his shift.

When he moves his hand away from his face though, there’s a figure sitting about twenty yards away, exactly where he and Hawkeye had been standing earlier. The sun is up properly now and shining right at him over the hills; B.J. blinks in the face of it to try and discern exactly who the other person is. 

Tall, gangly, dark hair; if he didn’t know better he’d say it was Hawkeye, but the figure is fully opaque, and definitely alive. He stands, brushing the dust off himself, and makes his way over.

“Beej?” the figure says, and B.J. stops in his tracks, heart pounding. It can’t be. It _can’t be,_ there’s no way. The person stands and walks quickly over to him, and B.J. has to stop a cry coming from his throat when he sees the familiar face, backlit by the morning sun. It’s Hawkeye, and from the looks of it, he's alive. B.J. springs into action and closes the last few steps between them, and they crash together into a crushing embrace. B.J.’s arms snake around Hawkeye’s waist as one of Hawkeye’s comes to rest on his upper back, the other cradling B.J’s head.

They stay like that, together, scared to pull apart, for minutes, hours, days; B.J. has no idea. He doesn’t care. He has no idea how this is possible, but he doesn’t care about the how. As long as it's real; as long as he can stay like this and then pull away and have it still be real. 

Hawkeye strokes the back of his head and B.J. starts to cry into his shoulder. He’d been prepared to live however much life Hawkeye had left alongside him, regardless of what that life might look like. But now, whatever that _might_ have been pales in comparison to the gift he’s apparently been granted, just in being able to hug Hawkeye, touch him, be touched by him. 

“Is this real?” he whispers, face still buried in the crook of Hawkeye’s neck. 

“You’d better believe it,” Hawkeye murmurs into his temple. “You’re stuck with me now, no more disappearing acts. Maybe I’ll change my name to Lazarus, after the Bible story, what do you think? Don't think my Dad'd be pleased, mind you. Definitely not Kosher.” 

B.J. laughs and pulls away slightly to look Hawkeye in the face. His eyes are as red as his own, tears streaming, bottom lip wobbling. 

“How?” B.J. breathes, feeling like he’s floating on air. 

“Long story,” Hawk replies, cryptically. “I promise I’ll tell you, once I get my head wrapped around it myself.” B.J. doesn’t respond, still trying to process everything. “Want me to pinch you?” Hawk says, with a hint of his usual leer and a waggle of his eyebrows. “If you say yes I get to pick where.”

B.J. looks at Hawkeye’s face, at his stupid grin, his hair lifting slightly on the breeze, his eyes scrunched up from his smile. God, he is so unbelievably in love. "Idiot," he whispers.

***

They stand there, just looking at each other, holding on to each other, seemingly for hours, though it can’t be more than a few minutes. Hawkeye’s back on alive-people time now; he hadn’t realised how strangely the hours had passed whilst he was dead. He’s _alive_ , holy _shit_.

“I— I love you too, Beej,” the words suddenly fall out of him, like he’s momentarily lost control of both his brain and his mouth. “In case it wasn’t already obvious. I love you, so, so much. So much that sometimes when we were standing back to back in the O.R. I felt like _I_ should be the one on the operating table, never mind fifteen different shrapnel-filled soldiers.” 

B.J. just continues looking at him and Hawkeye panics for half a second, but then his face splits into a blinding smile and he pulls Hawkeye forward by the front of his signature red robe — the robe that he _definitely_ had not been wearing before he disappeared — and clumsily kisses him full force, right on the lips, sending electricity through every last one of Hawkeye’s nerves until he feels like he’s been plugged into the generator. His heart pounds so hard inside his chest that he feels it in his fucking _eyelashes_ , and he holds onto the other man for dear life as B.J. tentatively licks along his bottom lip. 

He pulls away, breathing heavily and kicking himself for the small noise of protest B.J. makes.

“Just to make sure — and don’t knock me for asking — but you definitely, _definitely_ don’t mind that I’m alive again now?”

B.J. leans back to look him properly in the eye, face flushed but looking thoroughly confused. “What the _hell_ are you talking about," he splutters. "You somehow being alive again is the closest I’ve ever come to believing in miracles; _of course_ I don’t mind, you fool.”

“Well it’s just— I mean, being in love with a ghost is a less of an intense commitment than being in love with an actual real person, I just need to make sure that this is what you wanted. I mean, it’s like going to the pet store for a gerbil and coming home with two puppies and a lizard instead. It’s just not exactly what you signed up for.”

“Hawkeye,” B.J. deadpans, stern tone softened by the fact that he raises one hand to Hawkeye’s face, thumb stroking at his cheekbone. “You’re not a puppy, or a lizard. You’re a guy, and I’m in love with you.”

“Ah, yes, but I said _two_ puppies,” voice cracking slightly as he counter-argues on instinct, not sure why he’s still even talking. B.J. seems to have the same thought because he just rolls his eyes and leans in to capture Hawks lips again, and Hawkeye lets himself go properly this time. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. Whatever, life’s short, and apparently not as cut-and-dry and he'd once thought it was. Let yourself have simple joys, and let yourself have them often, he thinks to himself, because you never know what twists are in the road ahead. 

Twenty minutes ago he was dead, then suddenly he was in purgatory (or _something_ ), and now he’s the most alive he’s ever felt. He’s _kissing_ B.J. Hunnicutt. He brings his hands up from where he'd planted them at B.J.’s waist so that one cups his jaw and the other tangles in his hair, down at the nape of his neck. His still freshly cut hair, Hawkeye reminds himself. It’s been what, _four days_? How can your entire life change so much, and on such opposite ends of the good/bad scale, in the space of four days? 

He holds B.J. close, and then closer still, and eventually they stop kissing and instead opt for just standing there, holding each other with the reverence that only comes from the return of a beloved, once-thought-lost-forever thing. 

The sudden absence of something shows you in stark relief all the places in your life it used to fill, like as though the act of leaving leaves behind a palpable, physical trace. You notice the empty spaces even more for the fact that they’re empty, and they make you long for the impossible return of the past to come and fill the gaps that the future promises will continue to stay vacant. 

Impossibly, magically, miraculously, Hawkeye has managed to return and fill the gaps he himself left behind, and as he feels B.J.’s hair tickling his cheek, and feels his smile pressed against the crook of his neck, and feels his heart beating through their clothes, he knows with absolute certainty that he’ll never leave them empty again. 


	5. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and a little extra breakfast happiness, just because <3

It’s a sunny San Francisco morning in August, 1968, and B.J. can smell breakfast. 

“Yeah, Peggie,” he laughs into the receiver, standing in their little hallway. “Yeah, I’ll tell her. Maybe make a few weaker ones for Hawk, this time. Or better yet just make them plain, he probably won’t even be able to tell the difference.” 

Peg huffs a laugh. “Fine, fine. He can test all the ones that are going in the café, the other stuff's just for us lot anyway. I’m working on a new recipe this weekend, so he can be the first to try.” 

“He’ll be thrilled,” B.J. smiles. “How’s Jo?” 

“She’s good! She— actually, she literally just got back, hang on— Jo, say hi to B.J.!” 

B.J. hears a distant strained ‘Hello!’ and Peg laughs.

“She’s holding five different grocery bags, wait a second—” he hears the phone clunk down onto some unknown surface, followed by far-off giggles and the clinking of what sounds like bottles knocking together in a bag.

“Back,” Peg says, sounding rushed as she picks the phone up again a minute later. “She just went out to get some ingredients for me — more marmalade, for the orange ones, y’know? Anyway, I’ll have to let you go, we’ll be round to pick Ez up in about an hour once all this is put away. That alright?”

“That’s perfect,” B.J. replies. “Bye Peggie, see you later, and _bye Jo_ ,” he shouts the last bit into the receiver and hears a muffled ‘bye!’ in return. He hangs up with a smile and checks the mail left on the chair by the front door of their apartment. A few bills, a postcard from Klinger, and a letter for Hawk from Margaret, which he takes into the kitchen with him and plops down on the countertop.

“Peg said she’s working on a new recipe,” he tells Hawkeye as takes his usual place at the small table they somehow managed to shove in there all those years ago. “She wants you to be the guinea pig.”

Through sending B.J. regular care packages during his time in Korea, Peg had _eventually_ managed to make a few cakes that were near edible, and then had gone one step further and actually gotten good at it, to absolutely everyone’s surprise. Fifteen years, one divorce and one new bartender girlfriend later, she was churning out the best damn cakes any of them had ever tasted, and was selling them fresh from her and Jo’s little place downtown; cafe in the daytime, bar and music venue by night. A far cry from the suburban lifestyle they each thought the other had wanted, way back when.

“Well, can we tell her to take it easy on that next batch? I’m an old man, not some teenage yuppie.”

B.J. barks out a laugh, choosing not to tell him he’d already done just that. “Just because _you_ can’t handle them doesn’t mean they’re too strong.”

“Just because _you guys_ grew up in _California—”_

“I’ll tell her the last ones made you cry, that’s as good a review as any.”

Hawk turns to face him, spatula pointed. “Don’t you even think about it. I was just—” (he waves said spatula around wildly, concocting his excuse) “ _overwhelmed_ with joy. Like I said, I’m an old man now; you put me in front of a sunset any day and I'll cry, it’s not because I can’t handle my _stuff_.”

“You’re only forty-five, Hawk,” B.J. says fondly.

“Yeah,” Hawkeye says, suddenly looking more serious. “ _Really_ old.”

B.J. knows what they’re both thinking. Once upon a time there were four little days where they both thought Hawk’s future was done for. Any reminder that he’s still here, and by some miracle older than the day before, is always enough to sober them a little. Right now, that means staring at each other across the kitchen table; Hawk’s hair is longer than back then, hitting just below his collarbones and shot through with big streaks of grey. They’ve both got glasses now too; old age, it gets us all. 

Hawkeye smiles at him, his dimples more prominent than ever, and B.J. tries extremely hard to ignore the slight brimming of tears he can see in his eyes, even from yards away. 

“Are you guys just looking at each other?” Erin mumbles loudly from the doorway, toothbrush in her mouth. B.J. turns to look at her with a grin, spell broken. 

“Yeah,” he says with a head tilt. “Problem?”

She smiles, rolls her eyes, and then sniffs at the air. Theatrically, of course; a Hawkeye trait.

“Hawk,” she giggles, “your bacon's burning.”

“Shit,” Hawkeye exclaims, whipping back around. “Not _again!”_

B.J. tilts his chair back so that it leans against the wall and reaches down to stroke their cat Greta (Hawk’s idea, after Garbo) as she slinks under the table, relishing the opportunity presented to him.

“Y’know,” he drawls, “I do remember _someone_ telling me years ago that he cooked a mean breakfast.” Hawk looks over his shoulder to glare at him. “Now, _I_ don't know what _your_ definition of _mean_ is, but maybe they just gave us different dictionaries back in high school. No harm no foul.”

“Oh, buzz off, you moustachioed menace. Set the table before I set this frying pan over your head.”

B.J. laughs again, pulling a smile from Hawkeye. “As you command, _heart-eyes._ ”

“ _Thank_ you, _honeybunch._ ”

B.J. sees Erin roll her eyes and fake gag at their overused ‘ironic’ pun pet-names, before slipping back out the way she came. 

“Dressed and ready, Ezzie,” he calls after her. “Your Mom will be here just after breakfast.”

He sets the table as asked, using the mismatched plates and cups they’ve been gradually collecting over the past however many years — some from weekends spent in thrift stores, others from trips away, and a select few being gifts from their small commitment ceremony they’d decided to have for their tenth anniversary. 

One of those particular ones is a mug that twelve-year-old Erin painted for the occasion, featuring a slightly wonky depiction him and Hawkeye holding hands, with huge blue tears flying away from both their faces. An accurate depiction, the now seventeen-year-old Erin is still adamant.

It's a good life they’ve built, he thinks to himself. A good and kind life, with hardships like any, but hardships faced armed with the priceless guarantee of love and support through it all. It’s more than B.J. ever dreamed for himself, and sometimes more than he thinks he deserves; though Hawkeye is always quick to disagree with him on that, right from that first day he’d come back.

*** 

_Hawkeye had explained everything he could about the strange white space, including his younger selves and everything they’d said about life, death — the works — as they walked slowly back down to the unit, daring every so often to brush their hands together, just as a reassurance that Hawk was still there._

_“I wonder what’ll happen now,” B.J. had said, suddenly worried. “How do we explain all this to everyone? You being alive again?”_

_Hawkeye didn’t say anything, just kept looking ahead of them at something, brow furrowed, and B.J. followed his gaze to see Klinger coming towards them in a hurry._

_“Captain— Captain!” he’d shouted with skip and a wave. Shit._

_Hawkeye spoke first. “Klinger, I can explai—”_

_“Not you, sir; Captain Hunnicutt,” he huffed once he was close enough; he’d barely spared Hawkeye a second glance. “You’re an hour late, we’ve been looking all over the place! Colonel Potter said to get into post-op pronto, or else! Major Winchester’s throwing a hissy fit at having to cover for you, said he ‘wants to get some shut-eye before the war ends.’”_

_B.J. started, looking between Klinger and Hawkeye open mouthed._

_“What,” Klinger said, oblivious; “something on my face?”_

_“No, no, nothing,” Hawk had said quickly, looking like he might be starting to understand what’s going on. “Klinger,” he continued conspiratorially, slinging an arm around the Corporal’s shoulders and setting them all off walking again in the right direction. “Where was I last night?”_

_Klinger looks at him funny. “In the O. Club, sir, remember? With us guys?”_

_Hawk hummed his understanding. “And the night before that?”_

_“The same,” Klinger answers, sounding even more confused, “boy, you must’ve been drunker than I thought. You should start taking it easy Captain, or you’re gonna have to get one of the other surgeons to do you a liver transplant one of these days.”_

_B.J. barked a laugh, in shock and confusion — maybe the only people who remembered Hawkeye dying at all were him and Hawkeye; maybe bringing him back somehow reset everything, and it was like as if he’d never even been gone._

_“Thanks Klinger,” Hawk said, ruffling his hair, “you’re a doll, as always.”_

_Klinger peeled off then as they reached post-op, and with theatrical bow he bid them farewell before heading back to the clerk’s office._

_“I did die, right?” Hawkeye said to B.J. once they were certain they were alone. “I’m not just imagining that?”_

_“No you did, definitely; apparently it’s just us two who remember, though. It’s either that or Klinger is actually nuts.”_

_“Yeah,” Hawk had said blankly, looking far off in the middle distance. “Well... I mean, not that it’s something I necessarily want to be reminded of_ all _the time, but please don’t let me forget about it.” He looked B.J. in the eyes then, imploringly, as he brushed their hands together furtively. “I don’t ever want to forget how lucky we got.”_

_”Okay,” B.J. had whispered, feeling like he knew exactly what Hawkeye meant_

_***_

“You’re thinking,” Hawk says, plating up and looking at him with a watchful eye. 

B.J. smirks. “Makes a change, doesn’t it?”

Hawk rolls his eyes, smiling. Another Hawkeye-ism passed down to Erin. “About?”

“The usual. How lucky we are.”

Hawkeye looks a little shocked at his unusually candid answer, but pleasantly so, and he puts down the pan and moves to wrap an arm around B.J.’s waist where he’s stood near one of the cabinets, drawing him in.

“Shall we run down to the bookies, try and cash in on it?”

B.J. lightly clips his jaw before bringing his hand back down to rest on Hawk’s chest, relishing the solid feeling of it. It always reminds him of that first time he’d tried to touch Hawkeye as a ghost; how he’d gone straight through, like he was just air. He looks up to meet Hawkeye’s gaze, searching for something. It takes all of half a second to find it, and Hawk must see the recognition because he leans in to kiss him lightly, gently. 

“Breakfast’s getting cold,” Erin calls loudly through a mouthful of scrambled egg. They pull away, startled.

“When did you—” Hawk gawps, letting go of his grip on B.J.’s jumper to pull out his chair, shoving Greta off the table in the process. Erin shugs at him, grinning. “God, you are _so_ like your father sometimes. It's unreal,” Hawkeye says, sitting down with an amused huff. 

B.J. smiles, something warm and light settling into him as he takes his seat next to Hawkeye, on the same side of their small dining table; a habit's hard to break, especially when you don’t really want to in the first place. He nudges Hawk’s knee with his own, and Hawk nudges back, before stepping lightly on his foot. 

“If you guys don’t stop playing footsie, _I’ll_ tell Mom her brownies made you cry,” Erin says, not looking up from the toast she’s now avidly buttering, a small, mischievous grin on her face. Hawk grins back and kicks lightly at Erin's shoe, which she responds to in kind. 

B.J. looks over at the shelf above the back door; sitting there like a shrine to them both is the rock Hawkeye had given him, next to a framed postcard he’d sent to Hawkeye from Mill Valley during their very first week back in the U.S., when he’d gone home to sort out everything with Peggy. On the back of it, sitting flush inside the small yellow frame, are words of love, promises of the future they’re now living in, and a tiny drawing of a ghost, holding hands with a little mustachioed stickman. 

_Yeah_ , B.J. thinks, smiling to himself around a mouthful of eggs. _It’s a very good life._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u if u kept coming back periodically as I updated this ily <3 this was a stupid undertaking at a very crucial time in my degree but I don’t regret it! Had fun hope u guys had fun too


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